09 March 2009

language of fools

Cyrillic type wasn't at the printers?

I had heard about this, but when I saw the button on Daily Show...I had to wonder. So the first place that turns up when I look it up demonstrates the same outrage that it wasn't printed in Cyrillic. Do we have no intelligent people in government?

So it should have said something like: перезагрузка.

2 comments:

Bazarov said...

Given the number of times this has been brought up by work colleagues, I'm guessing they're really pushing this on Fox News. I don't watch it, but I can guess what the repub talking heads are vomiting forth whenever the sheep all bahhing in harmony.
Yes, Roman letters instead of Cyrillic is a bit of a slap in the face. Imagine the Russians doing the same, spelling America, for instance, as Америка.
My American English/Russian Dictionary didn't translate the word in question as overcharge but as overload. I can't remember how reset was spelled, but it had a pere- or пере- prefix, which is quite common, the meaning of which I've been told numerous times by my Russian professor but have subsequently forgotten every time.
Granted, it's a difficult language that's very unlike English, but I'd like to think that level of government could figure it out, or at least run it by some natives before presenting it infront of worldwide media.

Sun Tzu said...

That was mostly my point; they couldn't have run this by some Russian speakers to make sure it was the right word, much less transliterate it into Cyrillic? We should have plenty of Russian experts leftover from the bad old days. One thing to butcher the word in question, because supposedly it is a relatively new term. It's quite another not to bother to put it into written Russian in the first place.

I had heard of it through BBC, but I can imagine Faux is having a field day with it. If there's anything they hate more than Obama, it's the Clintons.