Protocover for Curse & Berate in 69+ Languages...isn't the nun better?

fm and podcast filth

A fortissimo-nacht or so ago, we did a very schizoid interview with Portland-based free-sprech radio station KBOO. A bifurcated affair: in the on-the-air part we could not say “shite” unless we preceded it wit “Gob” and added “Quarterly”…let alone utter the word “bitch” or “whore” or any other loverly words; in the podcast we were able to unleashed the power of the word, especially the specifically unkind word, and spent some time riffing & rifling through CURSE + BERATE IN 69+ LANGUAGES…. If you want to know what was specifically said, well….


…here is the url from a couple of wks ago for that KBOO fm podcast.........

http://www.kboo.fm/node/6559

8 Nov. 2007

corresp. fr. india
8 nov. 2007


Dear RVB,

Now I'm really flummoxed. .....exact equivalents are tough because Indian kids, at least from the lower middle and poorer sections who would be likely to use more colorful slang, are too poor to buy Barbies and GI joes. The kids who have GI Joes would be anglicized and tend to use the original english profanities :-)

here are some untranslatable very Indian words. these are Hindi, but everyone uses them:

1. chakka= literally means hitting six on the toss of the dice. Colloquially used to mean a man who isn't a 'man', 'can't get it up', and his member remains limp like a six.

2. Ullu ka pattha= son of an owl. Owls are considered stupid because they blunder about half-awake in the daylight.

3.behen-chut= sister-fucker, maa-chut= mother-fucker These are commonly used very strong curses in Hindi, also appropriated by other linguistic comunities

Some Kannada ones which everyone in B_____ and neighbouring areas use, whether they speak Kannada fluently or not;

1. chattri = literally umbrella. an abject flatterer

2. terle= a fellow who messes up things, useless fellow, screw-up

3. bombaat = fantastic, teriffic

Hope this helps. Wish you all the best with this and future projects. Cheering you all the way.

Do stay in touch when time permits. Your mails are a joy to read :-) Hope the cats are not into Satyagraha, but behaving themselves and keeping fit and happy.

smiles from B_______,


M_____

==================================

corresp. fr. s. africa, via n.z.
8 nov. 2007

allo allo,

seriously, what you have here is pretty comprehensive.
i couldn't add much else.

i will mention one spelling thingamajig:

HALSSNOEMOORD (NECKLACE/NECKLACING MURDER)

i'm sure that should be HALSSNOERMOORD -- note the R after the E. ("Halssnoer" = "Necklace")

I would have said Soweto Necklace myself.

l________

6 noiembrie 2007

corresp. fr. u. p. via iceland
6 Nov. 2007


Hi RV,

Here are your translation requests. B______ helped me with these.

FYI: B____ would like to be listed on this project as G______ J_______ (translator). I also have made a change in that regard. Please credit me on the byline as M___ L______.

I have attached this in word format as well.

FUCK YOURSELF WITH A BARBIE DOLL
Ríddu flér me› barbídúkku

FUCK YOURSELF WITH A G.I. JOE DOLL
Ríddu flér í rassgat me› hermannadúkkunni Jóa


FUCK YOURSELF WITH A STAR WARS ACTION FIGURE
Ríddu flér me› stjörnustrí›shetju kalli


FUCK YOURSELF WITH A STAR WARS LIGHT SABRE
Runka›u flér me› stjörnustrí›s geislasver›i

FUCK YOURSELF WITH A POKEMóN ACTION FIGURE
Ríddu flér me› pókemon kalli

FUCK YOURSELF WITH A MR. PINK ACTION FIGURE
Ríddu flér me› MR. Pink kallinum

FUCK EVERYONE ON YOUR MOBILE PHONE DIRECT DIAL
Ríddu öllum á hra›valinu í gemsanum flínum

FUCK YOUR BABY JESUS IN HIS NATIVITY DISPLAY
Ríddu Jesúsbarninu í jötu útstillingunni

IS THAT YOUR PRICK/COCK OR A POKEMóN ACTION FIGURE?
Er fletta tippi› á flér e›a pókemon kall?

YOU DON'T FUCK WITH THE VIRGIN MARY
fiú fokkar ekki me› hina óspjöllu›u Maríu

IF YOU DON'T SHUT YOUR WHORING CUNT MOUTH I'LL HAVE THE TRAFFIC POLICE TOW YOUR CUNT AWAY.
Ef flú heldur ekki saman á flér flínum hóru kuntu kjafti mun ég fá umfer›alögguna til a› draga píkuna á flér í burtu.

IF YOU DON'T PISS OFF I'LL HAVE A UN PEACEKEEPER MISSION WRAP YOUR DICK/COCK IN RAZOR WIRE
Ef flú drullar flér ekki í burtu mun ég fá fri›argæsluli›a S.fi. til a› vefja böllinum/píkunni á flér í gaddavír

23 oktobar 2007

corresp. fr. france
23 Oct 2007

Hi there

My father asked me to assist you, so here goes:

FUCK GOD.
J'encule Dieu
FUCK YOUR NATIVITY DISPLAY.
J'encule ta scene de nativite!
FUCK YOUR BABY JESUS IN A CRECHE.
Je l'encule ton bebe Jesus dans sa creche
FUCK THE NAZI POPE. (Also popular among Balkan Catholics.)
J'encule le pape nazi
FUCK YOUR MAY DAY!
Je l'encule ton premier mai!

Also, in French:

CATHOLIC COMMUNIST (also a popular Roman term of abuse)
Catho coco
SITUATIONIST WANKER
Situationiste de merde
Connard de situationiste!
FUCK FOUCAULT
J'encule Foucault
FUCK BAUDRILLARD
J'encule Baudrillard


Hope that's helpful!

Best

S__________

PS The film which my father mentioned is called _______

15 Oct. 2007

Corresp. from Britannia:
15 Oct 2007
chase the dragon: courir le dragon, chasser le dragon

the other, classy insult: si tu ne fermes pas ta putain de gueule, j'appelle les forces de l'ONU pour qu'elles patrouillent autour de ta chatte cernee de fil barbele

will that do??

[In a message dated 15/10/2007 CORRESP. FROM BRITANNIA writes: Can you handle this? They are OK people with a lot of nerve. xx _. Talk later???]

corresp. from Britannia
15/ Oct 2007

[In reply to A request for a couple of terms: One "Chasing the dragon," or "Riding the dragon".... junkie-speak for that opiate buzz... I've heard it used by French & French Canadiene poisonnes & the phrase is more or less used throughout the world. rv]

My French son says that the equivalents are very, well, equivalent. Viz:

chase the dragon: courir le dragon, chasser le dragon

the other, classy insult: si tu ne fermes pas ta putain de gueule, j'appelle les forces de l'ONU pour qu'elles patrouillent autour de ta chatte cernee de fil barbele

I hope this will take care of your appetite for stronzi.

Bien de choses,

_. _.

...Deck chairs on the Titanic

Been reading all the stuff in Salon abt the the publisher's distributor hassles...really parlous.

At this point it really is down to compiling & proofing. We'll try to give some sort of estimate in a wk or so but it could be another 6-8 wks. Still rattling various contrib/consultants chains. & stuff dribbles in which we can compare & proof against wot we got.

We're mostly finished with a massive proofing of the files, & for abt a wk have been laying in the texts. We originally had 4 interns lined up, but 2 left, & another 2 came on board, but they too left. The two that we have, besides Channing (Japanese/Mandarin/Cantonese/Gaelic Scots & Irish/Welsh/Portuguese) are very good indeed. One, Sarah is one of those bicontinental kids (whose parents live respectively in Roma & Ellay -- she lived near my old digs in Ellay), & she is fluent in Italian & Russian & is enow an expert in the cyrillic to be able to transliterate & write the cyrillic for 10 Asian & Middle Eastern languages that are still in the Russian or at least Cyrillic sphere on influence -- downside is that she is really into Emo.

Another kid, David, doesn't speak other languages, but does have a very good eye for detail & very good pattern recognition...so his work is good. I really do hope to be done with this by summer's end. He's more Thievery Corp & other haus mutanta bee-pea-em cardio-pulmo workouts.

I've been on this weird jag where all I want to here is Astor Piazzolla or Sonic Youth & I got about 15 hours of each on the iTunes, so the interns retaliate with Sufjan Stevens or Bright Eyes. (I pretend to hate Magnetic Fields -- they haven't noticed the ceedees on the shelves -- so we listen to something everyone likes.)

We're all getting good at typesetting in Cyrillic & Greek & even Arabic. (There are Arabic fonts buried towards the bottom of the InDesign Creative suites fonts inventory -- but we leave the Mandarin & Cantonese to Channing -- there are thousands of characters in several different files, each having to do with a particular dialect or region, with lots & lots of overlap, but a lot of characters that are occasionally used are hidden in one of those files. Channing says that after 3 or 4 years you can do Mandarin or Cantonese in yr sleep. Do I want to be counting ideograms in my sleep...?)

18 maggio 2007

corresp. from a recovering roman:
26 Apr. 2007

Hi,

Here's the Italian file again, with some interesting phrases added, and a few additions or corrections made:

So Œmpallato (I‚m busy; I‚m balling) Rome

C‚ho il mascarpone alle palle (I‚m really bored; I have mascarpone in my balls) Rome

Brutto Œn culo (really ugly, ugly in the ass) Rome

C‚ho Œno stronzo Œn forigioco (I need to take a shit; I have a shit offside.) Rome

The prick/dick/cock section is really thorough, I just clarified other uses in a case or two.

s_____

7 Mai 2007

corresp. fr. croatia
Date: Mon, 7 May 2007 14:15:55 +0200

RV, G__________ took a look at these, added some, and did the diacrites..some stuff we just don't really use...most is mommy, Jesus related, as you might have noticed...the two most intense concepts in croatian culture...

we don't have pinky commie or hippies phrases or all that nonsense....we don't like fags, either. and forget about screwing dads, that doesn't happen, only moms..

take it and run...will let you know on the program, it looks like it's going to go..

give m___ a big hug, i'll write her later. xoxo ____

26 avril 2007

corresp. fr. Finlandia:
26 Apr. 2007


Hey!

Thanks for your mail. Yup, we had a meeting concerning your list last week. Just to start things off, your question about the phrase WHALE FUCKER:

There is no such expression in the Finnish language. Whales almost never go through the Kattegat and Belt Sea straits to reach Finnish waters at the Gulf of Finland or the Gulf of Bothnia. Thus, whale-related vocabulary is absent in common Finnish. The literal translation is "valaannussija", if you want to use it.

That brings me to your list:

I hope we haven't done things wrong, though we tried to follow the job-description on page one.

We added many current ones, not only in the brackets specifying "add more examples,” and we rearranged the previous, corrected grammar, removed some obsolete terms, adding more familiar terms at the top, removing ones that had no business being in that category in the first place.

The four of us in the panel, well adversed in obscenities, had trouble recognizing some terms.

Some slurs, particularly the ones pertaining to copulating with various members of one‚s family (fuck your mother, father, sister, uncle, etc.) are uncommon in the Finnish language. Slurs such as these, I believe, are more frequent in the catholic countries.

Finally: we only had a day at this, so any questions you may have and/or revisions (if possible, we'd like to check the final draft for the Finnish section) will be more than welcome.

The sub-groups between phrases was quite specific, so I'm sure we've ignored repeating a few. Also, we've corrected the English translations ONLY where the meaning of the phrase was incorrect. I'm sure you'll go through these while editing.

I'll get back to you on the pseudonym to be used between the 4 of us later. In answering to this mail, would you please press the EPLY ALL button? Thanks!

Till soon,

k____



P.S. Worth mentioning: In the book “Mother Tongue,” the famed author Bill Bryson mentions that the Finns don’t swear at all (page 210, the Penguin Books paperback edition, 1991). Judging by the list enclosed, someone’s f***ked with Bill Bryson’s research.

19 febrero 2007

corresp. fr. croatia
19 Feb 2007


F___ is working on it...gawd some of those are hilarious, i did a study on Croatian profanity ages ago for a linguistics class, did i tell you? the "may-God"-etc.-ones are pretty damn imaginative. Croatians don't go in much for some of those categories, thankfully. what we have is more than sufficient.

anyhow, our weekly culture TV program is thinking aobut doing a whole bit on the project and profanity in general, based on the project..will keep you posted. if they do, they will probably want to talk to you.. more later, j___

[this was reiterated during further discussion exactly a year later…. Something about Nietzsche’s Eternal Return, nu…?]

prosinec 2006- styczen 2007

corresp. from france & quebec, can., via indiana
décembre 2006 — janvier 2007

People have asked how I found participants.

A lot of the contributors had been people I knew in Southern California in the 1980s and very early 1990s.

Some were co-workers from international banks or from aerospace, some bartenders or busboys & wait staff in various bistros & restaurants & diners.

Many of the more recent project participants just happened to be volunteers or interns for, or contributors to, Gobshite Quarterly, the polyglottal magazine I founded and edited the magazine.

Some were friends seeking post-graduate degrees in Europe.

If I noticed a foreign address on email or snailmail I would query them as to their willingness to participate, and/or if they knew anyone else who would/could/should particpate….

For each language we always sought second & third native-language speakers, so as to capture dialect variations, & also catch any errors unintentional or any errors intentional….

Below is a typical chain of call-&-response for more recent participants:


7 decembre, 2006

Dear F.J. ____________,

Sorry for not getting back to you yesterday, as promised.

I read yr pieces, & wanted to offer the following comments, thinking the works singular enough to merit comment/criticism.

Yr work submitted is intriguing but these pieces at least are not quite there yet.

D________, the last of these 3 submissions, seems to work best. I like yr mutant (?) couple & how they are so mismatched as to be perfect for each other. Still, the poem meandered. (Which is hard to avoid when you are using surrealist tropes.) But I like your the sense of narrative closure, which works best in this poem.

I__________ is droll & amusing, but too gnomic. & you have to be careful with your rhetoric in this piece.

P________ worked the least for me, in part because of the title, but only in part. Still, there are good images, & the images seem to be in service of an idea. (It also made me think of Wallace Stevens -- not at all a bad thing.) But P_________ is too ponderous, too portentious. Again, the rhetoric is a tad too close to the fatuousness of official speech to come off as parody or satire or comedy.

Let these fester a few months, look at them again, & do some revising & some cutting. You have a real knack with surrealist tropes, & good feel for the merging of the quotidian & the marvelous, & that's not nothing. & also you strive for a narrative thread -- at least in these three poems -- again, that's not nothing.

I like what you are doing, & it is different from what most people in North America are doing with poems, even some very talented people who are tunneling through dead-end projects but Surrealism is really exacting in its deceptive off-handedness.

& yes I would definitely be glad to see more from you, but after May 1, 2007, at the earliest

But not these pieces please.

There is something in editorial work called a palimpsest effect -- also in workshops. If I have read a piece which I somehow find wanting & cannot see a way to fix it, then I have a hard time reading revisions with the original piece bouncing around in my head. Unless the revision is very radical I tend not to want to see them.

Unfortunately things are on hiatus with the magazine because we are working on a special project for Soft Skull. It is a multilingual project (just 90 or so languages – we had to jetison 110 languages a couple of few months back because things were too-too & tutu unweildy), & we have to get the first 1/3rd in by January, & the rest by April. I hear a thuderous HA booming,ka- and thundering from the skies.

So unless you are a polyglot, or can proofread or typeset in Urdu, Bengali, Arabic, Belarus, Cambodian, Cypriot Greek or Russian, please wait until May (at the very earliest) for any new submissions.

However, IF YOU ARE POLYGLOT or HAVE CLOSE FRIENDS OR FIENDS who are polyglot, please contact us about this project.

yr obdt svt

rvb, / Gobshite Quarterly / rvb, editor / P.O. Box 11346 / PDX OR 97211-0346


=========================

8 decembre, 2006

Dear R.V.,

Thanks for responding to my inquiry so quickly. I really appreciate your thoughtful and helpful comments on my work, and will definitely submit new work in May.

Unfortunately, French is the only language in which I am fluent; I have a minor familiarity with Latin. If that could be helpful, let me
know.

Sincerely,

F. J. ___________


=======================

8 decembre, 2006

If you would like to proof our French entries, & emmend, ammend, or modify, your contribution would be welcome & we might be able to get a contributor copy to you.

The same applies for Latin.


yr obdt svt

rvb, / Gobshite Quarterly / rvb, editor / P.O. Box 11346 / PDX OR 97211-0346


=========================

29 januarius 2009

I don't think I'm sufficiently familiar with contemporary slang in French. However, I have forwarded your e-mail to a friend of mine, the poet and performance artist Francine Conley, who has a superb facility with colloquial French, in hopes of a mutually beneficial relationship.

F. J. ___________


[note: through the next several months this contributor helped us with both French & Latin, as promised.]

2 dekabr 2006

corresp. from pdx to the city so nice they named it twice
2 dec. 2006

Dear L___,

Some months or years or aeons back, ie, in an earlier Email I had told you that we were working on a book project, Sinister Wisdom being the title. The book is a cross-cultural 69+language compendium of insults & invective.....

We had to cut from 170 to around 90 to be able to get the book under 300 pages.

You had offered to include the Shit-In-100 languages songspeil from yr recent U__ play.

Well, a funny thing happened on the way to this letter.

Soft Skull books has said yes to the project, for publication next fall.

Also, I'd like to use yr cartoonys for the book, esp. the one where a person is talking to someone who's turned into a pretzel or toroid by shoving their head up their ass/arse. (I forgot the caption, which was funny, but the image makes people laugh before they even read the caption.)

yr obdt svt

rvb / Gobshite Quarterly / rvb, editor / P.O. Box 11346 / PDX OR 97211-0346
=========================

corresp. from the city so nice they named it twice
3 detsember. 2006

yes.i will get it to you asap-tomorrow it's a music score-but you'll be able to get the words from it.cartoon will take me longer-unless you have it-i have to search!

let me know.

what's yr fax?

keep the money and use it towards your very fine magazine.

i
rmn
yr
cnstnt
fn

mzlz

8 Juli 2006

corresp. from buenos aires
8 julio, 2006

this is great fun but it takes time.

will take care of it when back from france,

sorry!!

love

luisa valenzuela

[at this point L.V. was helping us with Spanish entries, & our Spanish file was approx. 80 pages, 2 columns, single spaced, in 9 point pica. And yes it DID take time. -- rvb]

9 janvier 2006

corresp. from beijing via melbourne, victoria, oz
9 shirer yue, 2006

Dear M___ & R.V.

I am not too sure of all the languages he speaks, definitely Mandarin, his email address is a______ @ _____ . com . cn …. The [transliterated] spelling is Q____ but Qang but prefers his english name A____. Sent everything to him and see what he can do. Its bloody hot and smoky from all the bushfires, tomorrow will be even worse. The exhibition looked interesting from the photos.


regards, G________


[We eventually received Mandarin entries….]

16 agosto 2005

16 agosto, 2005

Hello!

Thank you for your note.

You have to excuse me because I could not get your name; I'm really bad for that.

I'm thinking about your proposal; brainstorming; I'll need sometime and research... However I'll give two things to consider; one a sample of a short article explaining the last stretch of the Catalan literature since Franco's dead; the second is this:

I'm imaging something like a sample of 7 literary pieces by 7 authors of different takes; generation, style, thought, etc... but homogeneous enough to give an eagle view of the Catalan literature landscape; each sample translation, would be accompanied by an introduction that situates briefly the piece in the context of Catalan literature, history...

This structure of 7 samples; repeats in a series of 13; each time broadening or narrowing the scope to form a collection that could be printed separately as a whole. The objective is to promote, to inform, to awake interest without great academic, scholastic deep. Also the collection will situate Catalan literature in contrast with Castilian , Italian, etc... briefly but correctly. I could contact some authors and academics from Catalunya and ask for help, and offer their names to be mention; like I could coordinate, write if necessary, translate, etc.. but the beautiful would be if I could get collaboration from the academics and authors active now... As I said... I'll think about it more, a lot more...
Here a Catalan article about the authors of the Balearic school:


x_____ p_____


[note: attached doc., De la generació dels 70 a la actualitat, La generació dels 70: La narrativa, & ext. links not included due to intellectual property issues. But Catalan is fun to suss out, perhaps even stranger than Portuguese. Indeed what would Caligula say about all these Latinate descendents? -- rvb

11 julio 2005

corresp. from pdx to barcelona via pdx
ll julio,, 2005

Dear X___,

Twas good to meet yz at W___'s gallery show on Wednesday & again at S___'s W____ A_____ show on Friday.

(Sorry I had to duck out early Friday, but I had lots of work to do this wk-end.)

We had discussed the possibility of yr translating work by Catalan writers -- either contemporary, ahora, or 20th century writers. (Also, Sabrina sd that y're a writer, so I wld be glad to see any
of yr own work which y've translated into English.) We have been publishing lots of Croatian work, including a series of essays on the 20th Century thru a Rear-View Mirror, on such topics as the Automobile, Baader-Meinhof Gang & the Summer of 77, Lenin-Dada, Coca-Cola, & etc. (There are also 33 more essays from that Croatian collection,
so should our magazine continue, we will have plenty to say about certain aspects of the 20th C. (from a Balkan perspective).

Also, we've printed new translations of Petronius, a translation of a Machado poem by Walt Curtis, translations by Doug Spangle of a few 18th century poems by the German poet Holderlin, some very important writing by Luisa Valenzuela from the 1970s which has mostly not appeared in English (there are 30 or so self-contained sections from a novel, & only 4 or 5 had been translated & appeared, & we have done 8 more, & are working with another publisher to get her book published bilingually), & some stories by the Czech writer which were written in the 1920s & 1930s, so we are very open as to chronology.

What I see as very useful, if possible, wld be to feature some older pces, showing an evolution of Catalan thought & culture during the 20th century & its opposition to -- & suppression by -- the Franco regime. It must also be remembered that writing illuminating a commonplace from a different perspective -- brings a spark of the marvelous to the most quotidian thing -- can also be very important -- Bertold Brecht notwithstanding.

I was going to bring a few issues for you, but I forgot; Sabrina & Navid have some, & there are back issues at Looking Glass Books on 3rd & Alder....

I wld love to get together with you for some coffee some time in the nxt wk or two & we can discuss this further.


yr obdt svt

rvb / Gobshite Quarterly / rvb, editor / P.O. Box 11346 / PDX OR 97211-0346