29 Responses to Spreken Sie Deutsch?

1. Wendy, on February 14th, 2008 at 4:22 pm Said:

   I also like “Some people are thick. Point.” INDEED!
2. Kate Harding, on February 14th, 2008 at 4:44 pm Said:

   Oh, dude, the new tagline is “Some people are thick.”
3. Kate Harding, on February 14th, 2008 at 4:44 pm Said:

   I forgot the point! Wendy wins.
4. Harmony, on February 14th, 2008 at 4:44 pm Said:

   Punkt in this sense means period, like the punctuation. It’s an awesome quote!

   That’s actually a pretty good article. My German is likely no better than Google’s translation would be, but you are getting the general sense of it.

   That quote “a movement for a positive feeling” is actually “a movement for positive body-feeling,” (Körpergefühl ) which I think is more like self-image. I love German compound nouns. They are SO compound sometimes.

   And the very last paragraph of the article sums up the review of all the blogs they are looking at, and says (uh, very loosely) “All the blogs have this common view — that perception of weight continues to be discriminatory. About no other population group would these prejudices be allowed to be so easily disseminated and cemented.”
5. red_delicious, on February 14th, 2008 at 4:52 pm Said:

   Wow, isn’t that the truth, Harmony and go you for knowing German! I’m so glad people are picking up on this, Mo, I’m so proud of you!
6. mo pie, on February 14th, 2008 at 4:56 pm Said:

   What’s cool is that other sites are mentioned too: Fatfu, The-F-Word, Red No. 3. Woo hoo fatosphere!
7. Sage, on February 14th, 2008 at 4:57 pm Said:

   Rough Translation:

   FAT PEOPLE MUST REMAIN OUTSIDE

   In Mississippi, fat people will no longer be allowed to eat in restaurants. On the Internet, a group of protesting bloggers formed. Their gist: A lot of people are fat. Period.

   A lot of it is idoms (very common for newspapers, actually,) which makes it fun to read, but actually translating it is hard work– I read *in* German, so I don’t actually have to translate it it my head to understand it. Quirky me.
8. susanne, on February 14th, 2008 at 5:08 pm Said:

   Also this little nuance in the title:

   Dicke muessen draussen bleiben (Fat people must remain outside) is a play on signs you see at restaurants or on shop windows in Germany if your dog isn’t allowed in. There will be a little drawing of a dog and the text will say “we have to stay outside” or “dogs must remain outside.”

   And, and! The Sueddeutsche Zeitung is a big, serious newspaper and is published in Munich. It actually is quite widely read and well-respected. It’s like getting a mention in the Atlanta Constitution Journal or some other big regional paper here in the states.
9. mo pie, on February 14th, 2008 at 5:10 pm Said:

   Oh! I wonder if the article was in the print version. Quick, someone go to Munich and find out! Anyone?
10. littlem, on February 14th, 2008 at 5:30 pm Said:

    Point. Dig it.

    “In the blog a movement for a positive feeling”—new tagline?

    No Doubt. Awesome.

    As Marty and Cosmo would say:

    “Farm out.”

    “Right arm.”
11. littlem, on February 14th, 2008 at 5:33 pm Said:

    Harmony, you rock. Com teech me German plz *kthx*
12. Stacy, on February 14th, 2008 at 6:03 pm Said:

    Wow!! The Sueddeutsche Zeitung!!

    “Some people are thick. Point.”

    !!!!!!

    This is like a happy valentine! Let’s make a blog scene.
13. Stacy, on February 14th, 2008 at 6:04 pm Said:

    I’m just gonna start saying “point” for everything, actually. Once it’s a full-blown meme, we’ll know where it started. On the thick blog scene.
    :D
14. Bellesouth, on February 14th, 2008 at 6:49 pm Said:

    The only thing I can say in German is “Der rot kohl ist alle!”, which I believe means “The red cabbage is all gone!”

    Anyway, proud of you guys!
15. lisa-marie, on February 14th, 2008 at 6:54 pm Said:

    “In the blog a movement for a positive feeling”—new tagline?

    Totally! That is awesome!
16. stefanie, on February 14th, 2008 at 8:27 pm Said:

    Punkt!

    I love “Their tenor: Some people are thick.” I can’ definitely appreciate a thick tenor … :ducking and running:

    Seriously, it’s great that this has gone “international.”
17. Miriam, on February 14th, 2008 at 9:05 pm Said:

    Not that my German is great but the Google version does show the limits of machine translation. The Russians say that a translation is like a mistress – either ugly and loyal or beautiful and unfaithful. Going towards the latter (with more knowledge of English idiom and missing a few words of the German), I’d translate the description of bfd as:

    In Big Fat Deal, a blog writer calls for a boycott of the musician Wycleaf Jean who asked girls at a concert to come on stage with him, but only if they weigh less than 200 pounds. The creator of this site sees in the blog a movement towards a positive body image, no matter what one’s weight is.
18. April D, on February 14th, 2008 at 10:19 pm Said:

    This is so awesome and amazing. Point! :) Just knowing that such concepts are getting around globally makes you know (even though I know intellectually we mostly already DO know) but REALLY know that yes; fat people are everywhere. It is not a phenomenon exclusive to America. Or England. Or anywhere. Or any TIME period. We just…ARE! :D How neat!

    Oh and my only German harks back to taking a level one German class while abroad in France…talk about Mind-F… tests were fun… “Translate these French phrases into German!” *raises hand* Um…what does this French phrase mean in English?!? ;) (And I know a lot of French too…but slang is always the toughest to learn!). Only thing of German I can remember is “Das licht is blau” (Probably spelt all wrong too and no capitalized correctly) but “The light is blue.” Really useful phrase that…Point.
19. Karen, on February 14th, 2008 at 10:45 pm Said:

    Finally, a chance to use my heretofore completely useless M.A. in Germanic language and literature. I wanted to point out a nice little sarcastic bit in the paragraph about the bill in Mississippi. It talks about how the bill would provide guidelines to restaurants regarding who should be regarded as “fat,” and thus presumably already full.
20. Karen, on February 14th, 2008 at 10:55 pm Said:

    Bah ha ha, and here’s another good line, from the first paragraph:

    Germany should slim down, is the message [from TV, radio, newspapers, and the Internet], because thinner means healthier. Bulimics and anorexics must be really having a party right now.
21. Karen, on February 15th, 2008 at 12:16 am Said:

    Hmm, re-reading that second one, I’m not sure the tone comes across in translation–the intended reading is something like “Gee, bulimics and anorexics must be really excited to hear how healthy they are.”
22. Rachel, on February 15th, 2008 at 4:55 am Said:

    I personally love this line

    anti-Fettleibigkeits hysteria so far
23. Rachel, on February 15th, 2008 at 9:18 am Said:

    Eh, I took Spanish, not German. But my Gay Boy Friend is a German major and speaks it. I’ll see if he can’t do more translating for us.
24. Wendy Withers, on February 15th, 2008 at 9:38 am Said:

    I know this blog gives me positive body-feelings. If you ever need someone to translate a Hebrew article, I can put my three-year-old reading level in Hebrew to the test.
25. Karin, on February 15th, 2008 at 10:10 am Said:

    What a positive article! I’m surprised, because it often seems that the German media (I live in Germany) is even more obsessed with “thin = healthy = pretty” than the American media. Bleh…

    Mo, if you want a full translation of the article, please let me know! :-)
26. mo pie, on February 15th, 2008 at 1:06 pm Said:

    I speak Dutch, but I still don’t know enough to translate this article very well. Google translator gives me:

    In America, there is the mouth full of dieticians, workouts, afvalkampen, healthier lifestyles and the like. A range fatblogs suggests that thick, beautiful: “Long live the whales! Ge have a lot of ‘suits’! “They are so proud of them erotic photographs of moddervette people on the mainpage. The land of the free has always suffered a large percentage of population that volslank. Mja, where is Mc Donalds arise? For me like a Big Mac Menu, with mayonnaise, a cola and salt on the fries. And give me but especially people who feel good in their skin. You live only once. Below, a thick volslanke ode to all people.

    I could probably do a better translation, given some time. But I do enjoy “Long live the whales! Ge have a lot of ‘suits’!”
27. Mercy, on February 19th, 2008 at 6:54 pm Said:

    I live in Munich, and I missed it! Arrgh!

    My husband and I don’t get a daily paper, but I can ask around and see if anyone I know still has theirs from last week if you want a paper copy –or actually find the public library and see if it’s got one I can photocopy.

    I’d offer a translation, but I suspect that Karin might have better german than mine.

    (Karin: I had thought that Germany was a bit better than the US about the thin=healthy=pretty thing. They certainly seem to be less prone to the advice-from-strangers syndrome, and while I’ve seen weight-loss ads on TV, nothing like the crash diet ads I saw daily in the US has shown up yet.

    Although I did realize this weekend that Weight Watchers ads here use the line “Because I want to lose weight, but I don’t want to change my lifestyle” among others. So they’re still openly fad-dietish here.)
28. mo pie, on February 19th, 2008 at 7:02 pm Said:

    Well, if you could find a copy of the paper, that would be great! I’ll be in Munich next month, I can just come pick it up, and buy you a beer! :)
29. Mercy, on February 20th, 2008 at 12:09 pm Said:

    I’ll see what I can do. Drop me an email, if you’re serious about picking it up!

    (use the email I entered for this comment –blame it on the flu I’m fighting, but I typoed my email in the first comment. Whoops.)

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