Language Bluff
It often happens that a few seconds are wasted staring at the horizon trying to translate a very Arabic word to the Syntax German imports or vice versa. Occasionally, a word is brushed off as being too Arabic for translation. At other times, in a twist of cultures and language, an otherwise untranslatable would just goes beyond the jest of translation.
Assaf talking to Dani: “You know, we just need to get a shabloneh and it’ll be fine. Ah wait, shabloneh, I have no idea what that is in English. Lina, what’s a shabloneh in English?”
Lina: “What the hell is a shabloneh? Roba, do you have any idea what a shabloneh is?”
Me: “Yeah, it’s like a ruler with circles and toilets and stuff.”
Lina: “Huh?”
Dani: “AAHHHHHHHH. You mean a schabelone! I know what that means, it’s the same word in German. Or maybe it’s a German word and you guys stole it.”
Farah
July 9, 2008 @ 12:01 pm
I think you mean schablone.
MMM
July 9, 2008 @ 12:32 pm
English for it is ‘Stencil’; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stencil
And yep in German it is ‘Schablone’; http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schablone
Amnesiac
July 9, 2008 @ 1:08 pm
Toilets???
khalid jarrar
July 9, 2008 @ 3:22 pm
3aaaaaaaaaaaa
Stencil :’(
took me back some 8 years ago to my sanfoor year in engineering, we have to do a while year of engineering drawing…i mean old-fashion drawing using adawat monqari`9a such as papers and aqlam and T square o mothallathat and stuff.
thank you God for Autocad :D
stencils are something that belongs to that period in life. now you import an object in autocad and you put any toilet in the world you want:P
Halalhippie
July 10, 2008 @ 1:15 am
Shabloneh …. looks like the Yiddish version of ‘Schablone’; (pretty much the same in Danish) looks like a Jewish conspiracy :-) You’ve been had. [yes, I AM just joking]
Beti
July 12, 2008 @ 1:30 pm
The same word is used in Slovenian as well, but spelled šablon… It’s originally French…
Mariana
July 22, 2008 @ 6:30 am
Oh. I’m glad somebody found out what it was, because i was kinda, you know, wondering what is was. I’m brazilian and I have no idea what it’s called, even though I have one. I guess a ruler with circle-shaped holes fits it well :D