A Condor Just Crapped On My Windshield
David “The Condor” Jessen - the blogger who thinks the recall ballot is too confusing for idiots Democrats to use, Dan Weintraub to task (scroll down to “Facts, Food and Racism”) for using one of Cruz Bustamante’s most offensive statements - “they are against food” - as a heading for a recent entry. Condor claims to know better Spanish than Univision, who provided the transcript on which Weintraub relies. Here is the original statement:
Estan en contra comida.
This is about as word-for-word as it gets: “They are against food.” The only second meaning I am aware of for comida is “dinner,” the main meal of the day, which is typically eaten in the middle of the day in Mexico. The evening meal, “cena,” is relatively light. So it is possible - though extremely unlikely - that Mr. Bustamecha really meant to accuse his Republican opponents of being opposed in principle to eating one’s main meal around lunch time. There is absolutely no basis for Condor’s assertion that Cruz really mean to say “they are against good nutrition” - as if that would be any better, anyway.
The mind boggles as to what kind of nonsense the Condor will stumble across next. My guess is that he’ll argue that the figurative meaning of “por la raza todo, fuera de la raza nada” really means “We are a group of nice, proud, patriotic, well-behaved Americans of Chicano descent who can’t wait to help others in the community.”
October 1st, 2003 at 9:10 am
I will try to design a “Coalition Against Food” logo is someone is willing to host it on their server.
October 1st, 2003 at 9:11 am
Go for it!
October 1st, 2003 at 10:35 am
Seems like Condor doesn’t know Spanish either, like Bustamante.
Bustamante said “No quieren licencias para conducir por los inmigrantes. Estan en contra comida.”
“Estan en contra comida.” Doesn’t make any sense in Spanish either. The closest translation one can come up with is “they are against food”. Yes, that’s a literal translation, but what Bustamante said makes little grammatical sense in Spanish.
A more literal translation of what he said is, “They are in counter food”, which makes less sense.
To say that “they’re against nutrition”, he would have (should have?) said “Estan en contra de la nutricion.”
Perhaps Bustamante and Condor need to stop pretending they know Spanish. It’s embarassing.
October 1st, 2003 at 11:19 am
Hmmm …
Maybe it’s not such a good idea for Bustamante to expose his lack of Spanish when seeking the Mexican-American vote
October 1st, 2003 at 11:38 am
I dunno, Mexicans are not like the French. They tend to be very appreciative of even the worst efforts of gringos to speak their language.
October 1st, 2003 at 12:03 pm
> Maybe it’s not such a good idea for Bustamante to expose his lack of Spanish when seeking the Mexican-American vote
Well Bush & Dean like to do the same, and they don’t do very well either. But I think Hispanics in general appreciate people trying to speak our native language. Like Xrlq said, it’s not like the French for the *most* part. Maybe Argentinians and Peruvians … :-)
What I find more alarming is that this guy tries to pass himself off as an IMMIGRANT, when he’s not. He was born in the US, the real immigrant in this race is Arnold. It’s an insult for people who had to go throught the sacrifices and effort to come legally to this country, and put up with INS incompetence to have this guy pretending he’s “been there”.
October 1st, 2003 at 4:13 pm
Google’s translation-bot doesn’t help much…
Apparently, “estan in contra comida” translates to:
“they estan in against food.”
October 1st, 2003 at 4:35 pm
> estan in contra comida
It’s “en”.
You can’t blame the google translation tough, when the original text is just plain wrong.
October 1st, 2003 at 5:30 pm
It works a little better if you put back the accent:
est
October 1st, 2003 at 5:51 pm
> est
October 1st, 2003 at 5:55 pm
I know. I’m telling you what Google said, not what a decent human translator would have said.
October 1st, 2003 at 6:35 pm
Oh whoops.
For an automated translation of a nonsense statement, that was pretty good though! :-)