Freedom comes to Belgium
Piltdown Man
Almost to the day twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the
Church of Scientology finally brought Freedom to Belgium.
Who could describe my joy two days ago when I came back from grocery
shopping, and spotted several copies of a publication with the title
"Vrijheid", that's "freedom" in Dutch, in the recycling box in the hall.
It's conveniently located next to the mailboxes, so that people can dump
unwanted junk mail straight into it. (Actually, some of the people who
deliver door-to-door advertising crap have helpfully started putting stacks
of their material straight into it, too, without bothering to stuff
individual mailboxes, most of which have "no unaddressed advertising"
stickers on them anyway. Once a week, it moves out onto the pavement for
collection. The perfect cycle for printed material: from printer, to
delivery guy, to recycling bin, to garbage truck, with no pesky need for a
human reader in between.)
Anyways, upon closer inspection, this indeed turned out to be a special
Dutch-language, Belgian edition (you can tell, because they put a silly
little Belgian flag under the "Vrijheid" title) of Freedom magazine, and I
saved three copies from tomorrow's collection round Whether or not they
had it delivered by a commercial company, or hand-delivered it themselves,
I don't know. I also haven't had time to ask around if this was just a very
local thing, perhaps done by a lone Scientologist, or whether they
blanketed the entire city, or even country, this way. But this thing is
clearly meant as a preemptive strike in light of the upcoming trial. I'm
glad to report it's up to Scientology's usual standard. And just when I had
decided to make time for ARS again, and catch up with what has been
happening, after a while of being preoccupied with other hobbies, too!
Physically, it's a 12-page, A3-sized full-colour glossy, with an additional
one-page A4-size "special supplement" inserted. It contains nothing
specific about the upcoming case that I've spotted so far, not even in the
front-page introduction by Myriam Zonnekeyn, who apparently is still on the
job as Belgian spokesclam. It's filled with the same-old, same-old:
Scientology's huge expansion, NEW BUILDINGS!, recognition of their
religious status in ever-more countries, legal victories all over the
place. And then the human rights stuff, a whole four pages about Narconon
and other anti-drugs stuff, and on the last page of course a piece by L.
Ron Hubbard, addressing Belgium from the grave, accompanied by a beautiful
picture to remind us what a goodlooking and impeccably dressed man he was.
Who would doubt the wisdom
of a man who wears a cravate?
The problem with reading it is: it is so goddamn-fucking-awful, and so
goddamn-fucking funny, I can hardly read a paragraph, or look at a picture,
without laughing so hard that I have to take a break for a while. It's of
course all written in typical Scientology translatese (except perhaps
Myriam's bit), and it is laden with the most incredible errors against the
most elementary rules of Dutch grammar, spelling, and punctuation, and so
many examples of implausibly incompetent translation, that I just can't
figure out whether the person or persons who did these translations don't
understand Dutch very well, or don't understand English very well. Some of
it seems like it could be written by someone with Dutch as a not terribly
fluent second language, and who among other things still uses a lot of
English spelling rules, but other things could point in the direction of a
very badly educated native speaker of Dutch, who doesn't know English very
well. Of course, there could be several people involved. To avoid having to
write he, she or they all the time, in the spirit of L. Ron Hubbard, I will
hereby make up a new term, and from now on refer to he, she, they or it who
produced these translations as the Translating Entity, or TE for short.
Later, perhaps over the next couple of days, I hope to find more time to
regale you with examples of the howlers in this gem. For this post, I will
just give you one the TE's most hilarious moments, at least among the stuff
I've read so far.
In the anti-drug section, they go on about an anti-drug campaign for
children they supposedly organized in Belgium last summer. There is a bit
in there (p. 9, col. 5) which in the original English undoubtedly went
something like (so this is my back-translation):
"(...) we must not forget to help children to keep off drugs."
Now the TE, with its love of one-to-one word substitution instead of
accurate translation which makes it so entertaining, decided to translate
"keep off" in a truly wonderful way. It translated the verb "to keep" as
the Dutch verb "houden", which in most cases would be correct. It also
translated the preposition "off" as the Dutch "van", which also in most
cases would be correct. So it ended up with the compound verb "houden van"
as the translation for "keep off". So this resulted in the Dutch version:
"(...) we niet mogen vergeten om kinderen te help van drugs te houden".
After reading this, I lay on the floor laughing for about half an hour.
Because: "houden van" in Dutch doesn't mean "keep off" at all. It means "to
love". So the translation, translated back in English, clearly and
unequivocally states:
"(...) we must not forget to help children to love drugs."
All laughter aside, how on earth can something like this possibly end up in
print? Scientology's complete incompetence just continues to amaze me,
however many examples I've seen of it. It is absolutely impossible that
this text was proofread by *any* native speaker of Dutch, even a barely
literate one, before publication.
Before I forget: there is one interesting bit of new content. They have a
new address, they don't give the address of the Brussels org but a new one
in Mechelen. I'll try and look into that address. And I now see that they
also identify the printers: it was printed by "Housemark SL", Arganda del
Rey, Spain. Odd.
xenufrance
"Piltdown Man" <pilt...@ivehaditwiththespam.sorry> a �crit dans le message
de news: 01ca62e9$47f326e0$LocalHost@gateway...
Hay Piltdown, I laughed also my ass a lot on the floor reading your analysis
of the poor clam Vrijheid in dutch, what a mess these people, how come they
don't even have one good dutch man to see what their bougli-bougla means!!
roger
>
Hartley Patterson
> "(...) we must not forget to help children to love drugs."
> they don't give the address of the Brussels org but a new one
> in Mechelen. I'll try and look into that address.
In the article that started this thread:
http://www.rtbf.be/info/economie/scientologie-deux-affaires-pendantes-en-
belgique-155084
L'Eglise de scientologie de Belgique a déménagé au mois de mai dernier son
siège social, d'Uccle vers Malines où travaillent une quinzaine de
personnes. Elle dispose d'un centre de dianétique au Westhoek en Flandre.
Le mouvement devrait prochainement inaugurer au boulevard de Waterloo à
Bruxelles un centre européen destiné à la commercialisation de biens
(livres...) et de services. Ce centre s'établira sur six niveaux, soit
2200 m2. L'Eglise de Scientologie internationale dispose par ailleurs d'un
bureau européen situé rue de la Loi.
--
"and the best part is that when they make it into
a movie, all of the stars can play themselves."
http://www.newsfrombree.co.uk/stolgy_0.htm
Peter Schilte
wrote:
You made me almost piss my pants laughing, P.M.!
Thank you!
And my guess is that someone gets some explaining to do!
Peter
"Scientology's upper level spiritual therapy is essentially dead space
alien souls exorcism."
-Chuck Beatty
Eldon
Maybe it was a native speaker in Holland who had one too many joints
at the local cafe? I mean, surely they know translation always needs a
native speaker of the Source language, with very few people being
truly bilingual. In fact, I've been waiting decades for a
Scientologist to explain why they don't regain fluency of languages
from past lives.
I mean, fuck, I knew a guy in Los Angeles who said he was Mozart in a
past life, and he was a fair pianist. But he couldn't speak any German
-- high, low or otherwise.
>
> Before I forget: there is one interesting bit of new content. They have a
> new address, they don't give the address of the Brussels org but a new one
> in Mechelen. I'll try and look into that address. And I now see that they
> also identify the printers: it was printed by "Housemark SL", Arganda del
> Rey, Spain. Odd.
I don't think that's odd. They probably use a fave Spanish printer to
do various European editions of Freedom. Not that I've checked where
the French one was printed. There's probably a copy around here
somewhere.
Jommy Cross
in msg <a699038e-0a57-4e34...@a32g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>:
>On Nov 11, 5:03�pm, "Piltdown Man"
><piltd...@ivehaditwiththespam.sorry> wrote:
>> Almost to the day twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the
>> Church of Scientology finally brought Freedom to Belgium.
Rejoice, Pilt! You're free!
<snip>
See, that's where I think you guys haven't been listening. Ron explains at
length that translating into a non native language is just the kind of
thing your spooky oat tea powerzzz will be good for, once you've done a few
hundred wdah and your IQ is literally off the scale.
My theory is some disciple of the Holy Tech *thinks* he or she can write
perfect Dutch, or maybe Old Low Glockenspiel from some earlier incarnation,
as you suggest. They get everything they want in the shops, of course they
can speak Dutch!
>
>I mean, fuck, I knew a guy in Los Angeles who said he was Mozart in a
>past life, and he was a fair pianist. But he couldn't speak any German
>-- high, low or otherwise.
<snip>
Austrian, see. He woulda spoke Austrian. Ya didn't ask da right question.
Incident zero: Ron trolled them
Ever yours in fandom,
Jommy Cross
---------------------------------------------------
This message brought to you by Radio Free Albemuth:
before you hallucinate
--------------------------------------------------
Astrid
Thetans there, hardly anyone in their country even knows someone who
believes in this joke.
They want to claim that every junk-mail receptacle a mag hits
constitutes a Scilon or at least a recognizable presence, so they can
say "the Sciloontology message has touched thousands of people in
Belgium." "They receive our monthly publication Freedumb."
Tom Cruise is a nut and many people like nuts on chocolate, so
Sciloontology is practically the Belgian national religion
already.
On Nov 11, 9:03 am, "Piltdown Man"
Andrew Robertson
"Jommy Cross" <jommycross@[127.1]> wrote in message
news:9L0J3T2A4012...@reece.net.au...
<snip>
> Austrian, see. He woulda spoke Austrian. Ya didn't ask da right question.
Talking of speaking Austrian, where has .Lily gone? I liked her. Sometimes
she'd forget her mission and speak from her heart.
And her heart was senior to her Scientology training. More chocolate would
help her too. And chocolate is easy to find in Vienna.
Andrew
Piltdown Man
Piltdown Man <pilt...@ivehaditwiththespam.sorry> wrote...
Breaking Old Usenet Netiquette by replying to myself:
When looking at a post which I hastily dashed off, I realized it has more
typos in it than I like. Nevermind, I think most people will have read over
them. But I came across this:
> Who would doubt the wisdom
> of a man who wears a cravate?
That line break was never meant to be there. But it does make it sound
almost haiku-like. And because haiku, the scourge genre of the amateur
poetry world for decades, have been in the news in Europe quite a bit over
the past week or so, for reasons that aren't on-topic for ARS, I couldn't
help myself from trying to turn it into a proper haiku. Now I didn't quite
succeed, since a haiku should at least contain some kind of reference to a
natural or meteorological event. But since some people would say that L.
Ron Hubbard, when on Teegeeack, was a force of nature, the fact that this
haiku is dedicated to him, and inspired by gazing at a photograph of him,
may suffice. So here it is, my first ever haiku, inspired by Scientology's
wonderful Freedom magazine, and dedicated to Lafayette R. Hubbard:
Who'd doubt the wisdom
Of a cravated poseur?
Only SPs would!
(I'm pretty happy with myself about "cravated", because Hubbard himself was
always nouning verbs and verbing nouns.)
While I was working on this, i.e. counting syllables on my fingers, I
decided to salvage my conscience about abusing the haiku form in this way
by writing one that is truer to the spirit. So here it is, my second ever
haiku:
Night falls on Hemet.
All is quiet at Gold Base.
Except for David.
And now, I'm going to bed.
Eldon
<piltd...@ivehaditwiththespam.sorry> wrote:
> Piltdown Man <piltd...@ivehaditwiththespam.sorry> wrote...
That's nice. Did you translate the haiku from Belgian, or start out in
English?
Rene Descartes
> On Wed, 11 Nov 2009 10:24:26 -0800 (PST), Eldon <EldonB...@aol.com> wrote
> in msg <a699038e-0a57-4e34-902e-4dae886ae...@a32g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>:
>
> >On Nov 11, 5:03 pm, "Piltdown Man"
>
> - Show quoted text -
That's what American drugs and beer and fast food do to a person.
Makes him forget all the past languages he spoke before.
Why you think Tom gets all twinked off when his wife brngs Suri to
McDonalds?
Rd00
rockyslammer
> On Wed, 11 Nov 2009 10:24:26 -0800 (PST), Eldon <EldonB...@aol.com> wrote
> in msg <a699038e-0a57-4e34-902e-4dae886ae...@a32g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>:
>
We are all forgetting that scios are versed in "double Dutch" and most
are quite fluent in that other foreign language "Utter Bollocks"!
regards
Martin
Piltdown Man
Eldon <Eldo...@aol.com> wrote...
> On Nov 12, 5:19�am, "Piltdown Man"
> <piltd...@ivehaditwiththespam.sorry> wrote:
>
<snip>
>> � Night falls on Hemet.
>> � All is quiet at Gold Base.
>> � Except for David.
>>
>> And now, I'm going to bed.
>
> That's nice. Did you translate the haiku from Belgian, or start out in
> English?
When I write something, I always do a rough draft in Belgian, then
translate and refine as required. It's a very useful language, too. Because
nobody from outside Belgium wants to learn it, and therefore no translating
dictionaries or phrasebooks exist, we can use it as a secret code amongst
ourselves whenever outsiders are present.
Talking about refining, I want to revise that haiku. What I posted was a
first draft. Here's the improved final version:
Night falls on Hemet.
All things are quiet at Gold.
David excepted.
Much nicer scansion, and slightly funnier.
When thinking about the scourge that are haiku, I couldn't help thinking of
that other often-abused form of verse, the limerick. Which led on to
noticing that Miscavige really has a name made for a limerick. And since I
was sitting on the toilet when this notion came to me and had nothing
better to do, I couldn't resist cobbling one together myself. So here it
is, toilet humour in its purest form.
A chairman called David Miscavige
Has a temper notoriously savage.
When a board member miffs him,
He'll scratch and he'll bite him.
And then, let him eat only cabbage.
It's lame, and rhyming "him" with itself is bad form, but I like the fact
that it's completely impenetrable to anyone who doesn't follow Scientology
closely.
Being on a roll, I next came up with what I *promise* is my last piece of
Scientology-inspired doggerel. For now at least.
THE CHILDHOOD OF D. MISCAVIGE
A Commiseration in Rhyme
Kids can be cruel, and it is plain
That an odd name can cause one pain.
Some will pretend that little piggy
Is a rhyme for Miscavige.
Others still that runty bitch
Rhymes perfectly with Miscavige.
To bear the name Miscavige
Must bring a lot of baggage.
Piltdown Man
Piltdown Man <pilt...@ivehaditwiththespam.sorry> wrote...
<snip>
Damn, I've done it again. Barely had I posted, when an additional two lines
sprung into my head. There now follows a revised version of:
THE CHILDHOOD OF D. MISCAVIGE
A Commiseration in Rhyme
Kids can be cruel, and it is plain
That an odd name can cause one pain.
Some will pretend that little piggy
Is a rhyme for Miscavige.
Others still that runty bitch
Rhymes perfectly with Miscavige.
No wonder that Miscavige
Now has a name-joke allergy.