Sunday, September 30, 2007

Lost in Translation 2

Here's the other interpreter-related bauble I promised:

KEVIN: Is this king nuts? He can't send me to the salt mines! If he had any brains, he would send me to the kichens. I'm a great cook!

INTERPETER (in native lingo): May His Worshipful Majesty live a thousand years! Perhaps it would please His Worshipful Majesty to try his abject slave in the kitchen.

KING: What is this wretch's specialty?

INTERPRETER (to Kevin): The king is intrigued. Do you have a particular dish in mind?

KEVIN: Pizza. I manage a Papa John's in Muscatine.

INTERPRETER (in native lingo): If it please His Worshipful Majesty, his abject slave specializes in pizza, which he prepares in his father's toilet in the capital city of Oman.

KING: What is this pizza? I have never heard of it.

INTERPRETER (to Kevin): Describe what a pizza is made of.

KEVIN: Well, first you mix up the dough for the crust, let it rise, punch it down, and toss it in the air until it's a flat disk, about so big around.

INTERPRETER (in native lingo): His Worshipful Majesty's abject slave starts by beating a loaf of leavened bread flat, so that it appears to be unleavened. Then His Worship Majesty's abject slave throws it around the room a bit.

KEVIN: Then you brush on some olive oil and a goodly amount of tomato sauce.

INTERPRETER: One then smears the bread with fuel and the concentrated juice of the deadly nightshade berry.

KEVIN: Cover it with shredded Mozzarella cheese.

INTERPRETER: Conceal the poison with crumbs of rotten cow's milk.

KEVIN: And top it all off with whatever you like: pepperoni, anchovies, pork sausage, mushrooms, onions, olives...

INTERPRETER: Finally, one conceals the rotten milk with various items that His Worshipful Majesty's abject slave fancies that His Worshipful Majesty would like, such as small peppers that burn the mouth, tiny salted fish with the bones left in, mutilated body parts of an unclean animal, poisonous fungi that grow on the forest floor, plant roots that cause men to cry and dogs to die, and a byproduct from the fuel-refining process.

KEVIN: Bake it until the cheese is all melted and the edges are slightly brown. Then slice it up and enjoy!

INTERPRETER: One roasts it in the oven until the rotten milk goes runny and the fuel-soaked bread begins to burn. One then cuts it up and serves it to His Worshipful Majesty.

KING (appalled): Help! Assassin! Take this lunatic to the salt mines and never let him near my kitchen! By the way, Cook, what's for dinner?

COOK (who also happens to be the INTERPRETER): His Worshipful Majesty's favorite - calf's blood soup with sheep's eyeballs and jellied monkey brains!

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