Cartman
just made by the Presbyterian Church
Member # 256
posted
"To put past" means something like "consider capable of" or "within the realms of possibility" or "not inconceivable". As for the other expression, I have no idea.
-------------------- ".mirrorS arE morE fuN thaN televisioN" - TEH PNIK FLAMIGNO
Registered: Nov 1999
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Being from California, I can answer this. In LA and Southern California, freeways are often referred to by their numbers prefaced by 'The'. Some friends from LA and I were discussing this the other night. Up here we usually drop the 'the'. So from San Francisco, you might take 101 South to 237 and then get on 5 South. In a matter of several hours (depending on how fast you drive) you will wind up in Los Angeles and you will now be on the Five. So 'the Five' refers to Interstate 5 which runs South to North from San Diego, California up through Seattle, Washington (an on up into Canada). It is also called 'I-5', although that's mostly Oregon and Washington. The stretch between LA and 237 is pretty freakin' desolate scrubland and utterly depressing. Once Creedmore regained conciousness he could wander for miles without seeing anything but tumbleweed. Gibson was likely referring to this.
-------------------- "Nah. The 9th chevron is for changing the ringtone from "grindy-grindy chonk-chonk" to the theme tune to dallas." -Reverend42
Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
Cartman's explanation there is a little confusing. Basically, another wording of "he wouldn't have put it past them" might be "he thought it was something they might do".
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Although I tend to think of it more as "It's not something they'd be guaranteed to do, but it is certainly possible". Tends to describe sneeky behaviour.
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
Registered: Mar 1999
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TORI
Ex-Member
posted
Great work you all... (the more straightforward the better)
Tonight's batch:
Yamazaki sees that the carton has been reinforced with mailing tubes, a system that echoes the traditional post-and-beam architecture of Japan, the tubes lashed together with lengths of salvaged poly-ribbon. ???mailing tubes ???poly-ribbon
Not far from the station, down a side street bright as day, he finds the sort of kiosk that sells anonymous debit cards. He purchases one. At another kiosk, he uses it to buy a disposable phone good for a total of thirty minutes, Tokyo-LA. ???did he really buy a disposable phone? Or just a credit or something?
p. 26 Raton has a long, narrow skull and wears contacts with vertical irises, like a snake. Silencio wonders if Raton is supposed to look like a rat who's eaten a snake, and now maybe the snake is looking out through its eyes. Playboy says Raton is a pinche Chupacabra from Watsonville and they all look this way. ???pinche Chupacabra
for pinche see also: – Playboy has said he does not like the bridge, because the bridge people are pinche; they do not like outsiders working here. - Silencio hears someone say "pinche madre" and this is Raton. ???pinche madre
Thank you all for doing this!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Mailing tubes are cardboard tubes you put something in to mail. Posters, for instance. Poly-ribbon, I don't know, but sounds like an original coinage. Just fancy ribbon or twine, I imagine.
Yes, he really bought a disposable phone.
Pinche is Spanish, and it means bloody, or at least I'm told. But its used like the English bloody. That is, as a curse. I suppose it seems minor, but if I said "pinche madre" while walking down the street in my hometown I would be in an amount of trouble that suggests "bloody mother" carries a slightly nastier connotation than it does in English. Er, madre means mother, by the way.
Chupacabra might be a little difficult to translate. It literally means goat-sucker, and refers to a creature believed by some to roam the Latin American countryside, killing goats and other animals by draining all the blood from them. Essentially, the Mexican version of alien cattle mutilations. (And since there are plenty of people familiar with goofy UFO culture in Mexico, the two phenomenon are often linked.) In this case it's just being used as an insult, but I really wonder how your readers will react to someone being called a "bloody goat-sucker." Perhaps you might just want to translate it as "vampire," to try and get across some of the cultural context.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
I have no idea about poly-ribbon; it might besomething he devised for his story (something like pieces of ribbon made of polymers perhaps). As for mailing tubes, those are cardboard cylinders that many companies use to ship posters and large pictures through the mail. You just roll up the poster, stuff it in the tube, and mail it.
The disposable phone sounds like it might be another invention for the story, but it's certainly probable we may soon find ourselves being disposable phones instead of one-shot long-distance phone cards. I mean, we already have disposable cameras.
Babelfish says that "pinche" translates into English as "puncture." I'm not sure if this a Spanish slang phrase or not, but I'd say it's possible since you cite another instance of "pinche whatever." A chupacabra is (literally) a goat sucker. It's an evil little demon creature that runs around at night sucking blood out of its victims (usually livestock) like a vampire.
-------------------- The philosopher's stone. Those who possess it are no longer bound by the laws of equivalent exchange in alchemy. They gain without sacrifice and create without equal exchange. We searched for it, and we found it.
Registered: Mar 1999
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capped
I WAS IN THE FUTURE, IT WAS TOO LATE TO RSVP
Member # 709
posted
I ran the term 'chupacabra' past my Peruvian friend at work for translation.. i pointed out that i remembered the X-Files episode it was featured in, and he had this to say.
quote: The Chupacabra is a myth invented by lazy Mexican and Dominican farmers to extract aid money from the government.. basically, their farms did bad, and they would kill their goats and claim that it was done by unexplained phenomena and it would make them eligible for more money than they could ever make raising stock or farming
I pointed out that, to believers, it could be a UFO phenomenon, and that i thought Mulder had caught the thing in the episode. Jaffet responded that Mulder should have shot the lazy farmers instead since they were giving Hispanics a bad name. He included some inter-Hispanic racial slurs i won't repeat here.
Oh, and as for disposable phones, most phones are getting cheaper and cheaper and most of my friends only keep theirs for a few months at a time before upgrading. and they sell prepaid cellphones at 7-11 now, so i think that this is probably the kind of thing he means
-------------------- "Are you worried that your thoughts are not quite.. clear?"
Registered: Sep 2001
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"Secondhand daylight" may be something that won't translate properly. Used items are usually not as new looking or as clean as brand new items.
Gibson's use of "Secondhand daylight" means that the sunlight had a quality of being dirty, used...it's meant to imply that the atmosphere (the tone, the mood) was depressing. It's not meant to be taken literally.
"I wouldn't put it past him" means, essentially: "My dealings with this guy indicate he is a scumbag. While I don't have proof that he did it, I can fully believe that he would if given the opportunity."
"Poly-ribbon" as it appears in the story is, as far as I know, just a sci-fi device, although the name implies it's function.
"Pinche Madre" can be used in different ways: But the way I hear it most often, it means the same thing as "Fucking Hell" or "Jesus Christ", used as an expletive oath out of frustration.
It's used as a reference to the Virgin Mary.
Registered: Jan 2001
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posted
Disposable phones have already been invented. While trying to find the article I read about it months ago, I found that, coincidentally enough, they're about to be put on the market.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Is poly-ribbon another term for that ribbon used to connect hard drives and floppy drives to motherboards?
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
For fuck's sake Simon, get a normal hobby. This is just getting pathetic now.
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
Registered: Mar 1999
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capped
I WAS IN THE FUTURE, IT WAS TOO LATE TO RSVP
Member # 709
posted
hey i bought some of that to re-captain stripe my mustard tunic!
Registered: Sep 2001
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