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Fantasy has it worse, they translated every name of a person or spell or place in Harry Potter in Dutch, Lord of The Rings too.

 

Tolkien actually recommended translating the names. After the first Dutch and Swedish translations he wrote a guide (PDF).

 

 

The language of translation now replaces English as the equivalent of the Common Speech; the names in English form should therefore be translated into the other language according to their meaning (as closely as possible).

 

There are more specific notes for some names, and for some names translators should use archaic words in their respective language. The Estonian translation handled all that pretty well, although it also translated names like Sam (Juss) and Baggins (Paunaste).

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Don't really feel like expanding on it at this time, but I thought it'd be cathartic to come into this thread and say:

 

Online dating sucks.

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Last night I had the best idea for the title of a Canadian crime comedy.

 

Dial M for Murder. Pour Assassiner en Français, Appuyez sur le Neuf

 

 

 

This is the best joke I will ever make.

 

 

HOLY SHIT. YES PLEASE. YOU NEED TO MAKE THIS HAPPEN.

 

EDIT: Also, when I am drunk, I may repeat this to friends and forget to credit you. I apologize in advance and will do my best to make it clear that it was not me that was this mind-blowingly clever.

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Last night I had the best idea for the title of a Canadian crime comedy.

Dial M for Murder. Pour Assassiner en Français, Appuyez sur le Neuf

This is the best joke I will ever make.

This is the best joke I've heard all year

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This won't be news anywhere else in the world but next week we (Scotland) vote on whether or not we should quietly remove ourselves from the United Kingdom. For months now it's been gradually building up and I've been fine with it because I made my mind up literally years ago (yes, we should) and it didn't look like a Yes vote had any chance at all but over the last week it's started to look vaguely plausible that it might maybe be really fucking close, and there's more than a glimmer of hope and if it doesn't happen now I'll be unspeakably crushed. Like, worse than the death of a hundred beloved pets. This is huge, it will never happen again in my lifetime, and the chance of us coming close and not quite making it will be an odd bereavement shared with half the populace that I don't want to experience. How hard can it be to be a country? We can probably do it. Anyway, this is the big thing happening right now and I can't go outside or refresh Twitter or put the telly on without seeing it and it's going to be this way all week and I just wish it was over really.


 


If nothing else it's highlighted to me how naive I am to believe that the BBC is in any way a fair or impartial broadcaster. I know what the first B stands for so I shouldn't be too surprised but their attempt to smear and downplay the Yes campaign in the last few weeks in an effort to turn the undecideds towards a decision that would ensure their future has been an eye-opener. I wonder what else they've misrepresented over the years that I've fallen for. In any case if I actually paid my TV license then I would stop just to make a point. Currently thousands are demonstrating outside the BBC Scotland building and have been for a few hours but you won't be seeing that in broadcast media anywhere. This is mad and kind of exciting.


 


#voteyes


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The whole independence thing has been quite interesting. I can honestly say that I never realised until this year that it's something a substantial number of Scottish people are interested in, nor did I realise that there's such a perceived divide between our states — I guess I naively thought that we are all one happy family and that any divides are ancient history.

 

There seems to be a great degree of apathy concerning the subject from virtually every English person I've spoken to about it, in that nobody really seems to care a great deal which way it goes. Not to be condescending, but the seriousness with which it's being taken within Scotland is seen as amusing by a fair number of people I've chatted with, including two who are Scottish and moved across some years ago. Not so much because it's silly, but more because I think that most of us never realised it was such a thing.

 

I just hope that if we do end up going with the status quo, there isn't some kind of weird grudge held by those who were in favour of independence.

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Hmm, I have no great views about Scotland becoming independent, but I'm always of the view that as soon as a campaign starts to complain about BBC bias it's in trouble. I've done the same, given the Beeb seems bizarrely happy to ignore the Tories systemic dismantling of the NHS. You'd think they'd be all over the erosion of a popular and proud public sector institution.

 

I live in London, a city so detached from the rest of the country it might as well be independent, but I'd be interested to hear why you're so keen to leave. Much of the noise around the debate as been pointless flag-waving nationalism Team Scotland shit. The complaints about Westminster not representing you applies to everyone, unless you're an Oxbridge toff with a dubious history in PR. Also, if you leave, as far as I can see you condemn the rest of us to another 20 years of Tory rule, so please don't go. What's in it for you?

 

Ooh, my first post, I just realised. Hello everyone.

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So do the Scotts want to become independent from English to become more, or less part of the European Union?

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I've only been paying some loose attention to it, mostly because it's fascinating to watch from an outsider's perspective.  But my impression is that if the vote passes, then both Scotland and the UK are facing years of figuring out what exactly it means for Scotland to leave, because disentangling the two is going to be crazy complicated, then there's Scotlands relationship to the mainland, the EU, and all that.  Do they keep the pound, or adopt the Euro? 

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So do the Scotts want to become independent from English to become more, or less part of the European Union?

 

We would withdraw from the United Kindom and England, Wales and N Ireland would remain in the EU under the same name with a much less iconic flag. We would need to apply separately.

 

Why wouldn't we vote to be independent when the chance comes? This isn't an anti-English thing at all which is how it might be being perceived or presented in the media, literally nobody I've spoken to has mentioned that as an influence on their choice. It's an anti-Conservative thing most definitely, it ensures we would never again be ruled by a political party which has slightly over zero support here and yet has been in power for the majority of my life somehow. It means we get to rid ourselves of our nuclear weapons, foreign military personnel, set our own immigration policies and taxes. It promises the benefits devolution has given us except rather than have some of the powers, we get all of them, and I don't see enough benefit to staying in the UK to make voting no an acceptable alternative. I see what's happening to your NHS and your banking institutions and it terrifies me. I don't see Salmond as some kind of socialist superlord, but we have his party to thank for free education for all, free public transport for senior citizens, free prescription medication for all. The Tories gave us the Poll Tax. 

 

In the end nobody knows how it'll pan out. We can vote no and nothing changes, Cameron gives us a wee pat on the head and goes back to undermining the NHS a little more, or we can do something hilariously naive and uncool and vote yes because it looks in the eyes of a lot of people like the potential for a positive change (if a little scary). We might go bankrupt within a year! Who knows. But I'll be voting for the party who have done something positive for me in the past which is more than I can say for the shower of shit who are trying to get me to vote no. Really, if the Tories, Labour, UKIP, the banks and Murdoch are encouraging a No vote, then I can work out it's not in my best interests to even consider it. And I didn't even mention oil, look at that.

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As a resident from another country that left, good luck!

 

Whether or not it went well for Ireland is certainly... debatable. We've had economic success and significant decline, but if I was made to simplify it and just declare what I thought, I'd say it's better to have your culture be represented in government and also be able to accept that when things go to shit it was closer to being your fault rather than a decision you only had a partial say in.

 

Yes, this is a very vague sentiment since technically you could draw the line of 'your culture' anywhere, and the difference between a politician in London and one in Dublin making the decision is hard to gauge. But Yasawas did specifically note how the party they barely vote for is frequently in power. Also in Ireland we certainly had a history of being marginalised, though I don't know much about if Scotland has had similar treatment.

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I am on tenterhooks to see how it'll go, frankly; Scotland's a pretty great country and the idea that this thing has caused wide-scale political engagement in a time of ever-increasing voting apathy is fascinating.

 

I don't actually know whether it'll be a good idea because there are forces ready to prey on countries that can't really defend themselves, and seismic political change has a way of consolidating power in too few hands, but the idea that Scotland are not represented well by the UK parliament suggests that something has to give. I think, given how close this has been, that England will be on its own fairly soon, because if Scotland goes, Wales isn't going to stick around with a country that constantly disrespects it.

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I am on tenterhooks to see how it'll go, frankly; Scotland's a pretty great country and the idea that this thing has caused wide-scale political engagement in a time of ever-increasing voting apathy is fascinating.

 

I don't actually know whether it'll be a good idea because there are forces ready to prey on countries that can't really defend themselves, and seismic political change has a way of consolidating power in too few hands, but the idea that Scotland are not represented well by the UK parliament suggests that something has to give. I think, given how close this has been, that England will be on its own fairly soon, because if Scotland goes, Wales isn't going to stick around with a country that constantly disrespects it.

 

I'm curious, how does England disrespect Wales? Just because Hollywood casts us as bad guys, we're not always the bad guys. I'm also concerned that some are voting in this as if it is an election and that they can just fix it in five years if they don't like it. 

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Swedish elections are happening today and it currently looks pretty definite that we will have a new government tomorrow, switching out the centre-right alliance we've had for 8 years for a centre-left coalition.

As a slightly left-leaning Swede, it's going to be interesting!

 

The worst news is that the anti-immigrant Swedish Democrats currently are the third largest party with 13% of the votes. 

How that happens... I don't know.

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I've heard about that from my Swedish lady, and the worst part of the anti-immigrant party is how blatant they sound and yet they don't have trouble garnering support.

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A friend of mine moved to Sweden a couple of years ago and was tweeting about the same thing earlier. I think he mentioned their share is going down though or did I misread that?

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Initial polling had them at about 10,5% which already constituted the largest gain by any party in the elections. Then we got the first results from a few of the smaller voting regions which had finished counting where their share was somewhere around 16,7%, so yes it has gone down but they've still pulled off the best election of any of the parties really.

 

From what I've been able to gather (facebook chatter so not best source) the lions share of their votes come from rural areas and smaller communities rather than the large cities and communities where the population of immigrants are generally larger.  

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I am on tenterhooks to see how it'll go, frankly; Scotland's a pretty great country and the idea that this thing has caused wide-scale political engagement in a time of ever-increasing voting apathy is fascinating.

I don't actually know whether it'll be a good idea because there are forces ready to prey on countries that can't really defend themselves, and seismic political change has a way of consolidating power in too few hands, but the idea that Scotland are not represented well by the UK parliament suggests that something has to give. I think, given how close this has been, that England will be on its own fairly soon, because if Scotland goes, Wales isn't going to stick around with a country that constantly disrespects it.

Wales had even more trouble recovering from the gutting of its industrial economy by Thatcher than Scotland did in many ways, however it's never had the same call for nationalism in the same way that Scotland has simply because it's been part of the union for far longer than Scotland has.

That and we never had a issue like the Poll Tax (a very regressive tax that was tested out on Scotland by Thatcher) to make stark what many people feel to a certain extent, that London is too powerful.

Simply put Merus I'd say it's not the English looking down on the welsh, more of London looking down on everyone.

Regardless of the result I think (& hope)we are moving towards a more federalist Uk with far stronger regional devolution.

Sidenote: I bet David Cameron is REALLY regretting the idea of moving devo max ( a proposed halfway solution actually favoured by the majority of the public)off the ballot

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Independent Scotland, fuck yeah. I've been following this for the past half-year. It would be one of the most amazing and wonderful political developments I would expect to happen within my lifetime.

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The most dangerous part of Scotland leaving is their estimation of good will from London. I'm no pro- or anti-unionist, but believing London won't just give Scotland a giant "FUCK YOU" when they leave is a bit naive. 

 

The two major ones:

"FUCK YOU, you can't keep the pound, it's ours."

"FUCK YOU, we're voting no for entry into the EU" (Importantly, London could probably get a no vote from Spain here too over Spanish concern of the Catalan region following in Scotland's footsteps. I believe 2 No votes denies entry, but I may be mistaken.)

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The most dangerous part of Scotland leaving is their estimation of good will from London. I'm no pro- or anti-unionist, but believing London won't just give Scotland a giant "FUCK YOU" when they leave is a bit naive. 

 

The two major ones:

"FUCK YOU, you can't keep the pound, it's ours."

"FUCK YOU, we're voting no for entry into the EU" (Importantly, London could probably get a no vote from Spain here too over Spanish concern of the Catalan region following in Scotland's footsteps. I believe 2 No votes denies entry, but I may be mistaken.)

 

It's conceivable FU1 might actually be something Westminster is stupid enough to go through with out of sheer spite, because they could hide most of the consequences of their inflexibility through some creative accounting.

FU2 however....

Well FU2 depends entirely on the the country wanting to say FU staying in the EU, and i think there's a genuine danger of a EU exit if we have a referendum on it. The government has done a appalling job getting across to people how much EU funding help in some of the most deprived areas of the country.

 

That said if the big Transatlantic trade deal goes ahead i think id rather be out of the EU (honestly that whole thing feels like a open goal for the leftwing parties if only they had the guts to take it on).

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A single no vote denies entry. Scotland isn't getting in the EU for years. That said, after a while denying entry would become an embarrassment to UK and Spain because Scotland fulfils all the other requirements easily and already complies with EU directives. I agree that expecting good will from London would be a mistake whether Scotland votes yes or no.

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Yeah, I never said they're good ideas, just the spite that London might have over losing the gas revenue, and losing a nuclear submarine station.

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