2025 The Smile for Today

[Serinde]

@Richard: Holy Moly Andy! Some of the comments BTL in Reddit can be very informative.

@Debby: Elephants are not stupid creatures, are they.

[Mabel Figworthy]

This is a video from the San Diego Zoo (California) during the earthquake Monday. I hope the link works:

https://youtu.be/k0ORde2Yaww?feature=shared

How lovely!

[richardandtracy]

The care those Elephants give to the younger one is amazing, and the intelligence they show heading for the open area, just incredible.

Regards,

Richard

[richardandtracy]

Emotional Support Cat.. under strain, maybe?

Regards,

Richard

[Mabel Figworthy]

I think the cat needs an emotional support human!

[Mabel Figworthy]

[Serinde]

HAHAHAHAHA. (I love English; it must be possible to make these sorts of jokes in other languages, surely?)

[richardandtracy]

Love the seal.

I agree, it must be possible in other languages. I've never heard of it, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen - instead it probably just illuminates the extent of my ignorance.

Regards,

Richard

[Mabel Figworthy]

Yes, it is possible in other languages, but not always in the same way. That is to say, very rarely does a pun or piece or wordplay translate literally into another language - each language has its own words to play with. For example, the Dutch word "bank" means both the financial institution and a sofa, so you could do a financial pun about the back of the sofa being your bank (where you find money), which wouldn't work in English; but in English you could pun on financial bank and river bank, for example.

My Master's thesis was about Dutch translations of P G Wodehouse over a period of 50-odd years, developing a method of evaluating translations. You will appreciate the challenges the translators faced! As part of my translator studies I did a module on subtitling; that throws up extra challenges because you have to translate (or at least represent) something amusing like a pun, in a limited amount of text, which will only be visible for a few seconds. It's a miracle it works at all.

[richardandtracy]

Translating jokes & wordplay must be amongst the most difficult things to do.

Regards,

Richard

[Serinde]

A banquette is an old-fashioned term for seating, usually placed against a wall. The spelling might mean it comes from the French, but as you'll know, English went through a French fashion moment in language, when it acquired all the "u"s (colour, flavour, etc). So hard to tell.

Subtitles: Watching The Addams Family in Munich which was in English with German subtitles was possibly the most hilarious evening ever.

[richardandtracy]

Radio 4 has a thing on Saturday morning called 'Inheritance Tracks' where people give a load of meaning to a particular audio track that they'd like their kids or grandkids to appreciate. I have a similar list, but it includes films too.

'The Addams Family' 1991 would be one of my 'Inheritance Films', along with 'Addams Family Values' and the two new St Trinian's films (see https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0964587/?r ... 1_cdt_t_25 if you've not heard of them.).
I laugh so much I nearly cry with both sets of films.

Regards,

Richard

[richardandtracy]

Just.. just so cat:
https://cheezburger.com/9858427904/from-a-pawfessional

Regards,
Richard

[Mabel Figworthy]

Very

[fccs]

Truth!!

[richardandtracy]

Never make the same mistake twice:

https://cheezburger.com/10509806336/var ... ce-of-life

Regards,

Richard

[Mabel Figworthy]

never be predictable!

[Mabel Figworthy]

Not funny, but definitely smile-inducing, this radio programme - it tells of ferrets, dogs, and rats (one of whom I sponsor) laying cables, finding blockages, sniffing out disease, predicting seizures, clearing landmines, and finding earthquake victims - and all for a treat and a cuddle

[richardandtracy]

Sponsor a Rat?!? Feels like a 'Does not compute' moment.

The only rats we see are cat food, and in all honesty we see the insides of quite a few. Ozzie doesn't seem to have reduced the population despite the fact that he still comes back with two or three a day years after he started the practice.

How can you sponsor a rat? And why would you want to start doing it?
I admit, I've not listened to the program and I have been reluctant to login to the BEEB.

Regards,

Richard

[Mabel Figworthy]

I hadn't realised you needed to log in to listen, sorry.

With us it's mainly mice that get deposited in exploded-diagram form, Lexi only caught a rat once (and left it whole). But the rats mentioned in the programme are a different proposition. The rat I sponsor is a giant pouched rat (so called because it's big and has cheek pouches like a hamster) which is trained to detect unexploded mines etc; they are also trained to sniff out TB, and there is a project going on to train them to go into collapsed buildings (with tiny backpacks on) to find people buried under the rubble but still alive. The rat I originally sponsored retired, so I picked a different one which has recently been awarded a mention in the Guinness Book of Records.