Hard News: The flagging referendum
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
beyond the pale…
That’s not a fair comment until you’ve compared it against the certified Fairfax list of celebrities against change
Agreed, I should have said anaemic on both sides – it’s more the nonsense that they seriously put either list up as ‘game changers’ of any sort – just filling in lines of news they might otherwise have to devote to something constructive (or even more vapid, more likely).
Though they did relegate renowned NZ poet Sonya Yelich to being merely ‘Lorde’s mum’ and changed her name needlessly… (reporters, ptui!)It may come down to ‘Beach towels at dawn, Sir!’
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Alfie, in reply to
It may come down to ‘Beach towels at dawn, Sir!’
Which segues nicely into New Zealand: One Nation Under a Beach Towel? wherein our very own Steve Braunias pens an op-ed piece for the venerable New York Times.
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
Which segues nicely into New Zealand: One Nation Under a Beach Towel?
Link fail!
Try this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/11/opinion/new-zealand-one-nation-under-a-beach-towel.html?_r=0 -
izogi, in reply to
This is the guy whose biggest scandal came after a waitress told the world about his strange, compulsive habit of pulling her by the ponytail every time he visited her cafe.
Granted that was a scandal, but trying to define it as his biggest scandal seems to be completely ignoring the happenings of the 2014 election, IMHO.
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linger, in reply to
I think the point is valid in that ponytailgate got more traction among the public, and was less ambiguously down to Key alone. (And yes, it may seem a strange set of priorities: but ultimately, being some sort of shadowy wheeler-dealer doesn’t harm Key’s media image in the way being an arrogant jerk and bully does.)
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True. Plus with an American audience of the NYT it possibly sounds like more of an exotic weirdness for a politician than some of the other allegations and scandals that have followed him around through the years.
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Pretty good piece by Steve, bearing in mind the readership's likely background knowledge (nil).
Although it is another case of the OCR (Overseas Coverage Rebound), where a mention in the international media gets picked up by us (because nobody else cares) after it's been written by us in the first place (because nobody else cares).
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Sacha, in reply to
being an arrogant jerk and bully
think that was more about being a weirdo/pervert
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linger, in reply to
You're probably right at that, because having unusual personal predilections is obviously so much worse than treating people abominably. *headdesk*
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Winnie's at it again. This time it's the Russian translation of the referendum question. Instead of "should be the New Zealand flag" it reads...
"Put a tick next to the flag that in your opinion should become the New Zealand flag"
Technically he's correct. One is our existing flag and only the teatowel can become the NZ flag.
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linger, in reply to
Russian usually omits the copula verb (except in past tense), so that may well be the closest possible idiomatic translation.
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Matthew Poole, in reply to
Russian usually omits the copula verb (except in past tense), so that may well be the closest possible idiomatic translation.
Ran it past a Russian colleague, who said that Winnie’s claimed translation is correct and “a tidier translation is definitely available”.
ETA: hopefully voters who are relying on the translation have enough sense to know the intended meaning. I think Winston is being rather disingenuous on this matter.
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How many Russian-only speaking New Zealand citizens are there I wonder?
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About 10,000 people speak Russian, no idea how many are reasonably fluent/literate in English?
(I have often wondered how the Electoral Commission pick their languages to translate. German and Dutch are absent from their translations).
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linger, in reply to
NZ speakers of Dutch and German are overwhelmingly bilingual in English, so there isn't a strong need to provide support. Otherwise the general rule seems to be that languages spoken by more than 0.25% of the population are included. There are also a few languages on the list that don't meet that criterion; probably, in those cases, community members have offered to provide translations.
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