Just picked this up on a Technorati RSS feed. Apparently a French blog found the our coverage from 2006 when Obama met les bloggeurs at the ODP dinner and translated. Also posted on of Cindy's photos, labelled "Pho et Obama." My long gone college French can't tell me how good the translations is.
The photo reminds me of one many great things about the evening; for once I wasn't the guy at the table with freakishly long fingers.
RIP, JOHN OLESKY
5 months ago
6 comments:
As a semi-native French-speaker, I was pleased to find this... oh, and the translation is pretty clean.
Hope all is well in NEO.
you're welcome.
Thank you so much! I added an edit re the picture.
My guess is the goatee makes you seem less weirdly American to the French audience.
Pho, You need to hear what Renner said at this meeting...
Scene Magazine
Volume 15, Issue 90
Published February 7th, 2009
News Lead
Mope
Summit County Republicans Throw Themselves A Pity Party
On the eve of Barack Obama's inauguration, a splinter faction of the Summit County Republican Party met in a small conference room in Akron's Four Points Sheraton to discuss plans for the future. These were members of the self-titled "New Republicans" of Summit County, the upper-class junta that tried to unseat Alex Arshinkoff in an unsuccessful coup last year.
It was a somber event, though they tried to spin their increasing irrelevance as best they could. One man stood up to explain how Obama's victory was actually a failure, since he outspent McCain, yet only won by a "small margin." The only real issue discussed was how they needed to utilize e-mail and Facebook in upcoming elections, a point somewhat lost on the mostly geriatric crowd.
The meeting was much like the Festivus tradition of "the airing of grievances," as Arshinkoff's supporters called for unity while the "New Republicans" demanded inclusion. Don Varian, a loyalist to state senator and gubernatorial candidate Kevin Coughlin, got himself in a tizzy at one point, claiming Summit County's GOP was ruled by a "clique" which he had never been asked to join, so he wouldn't let them join his club either! So there.
Finally, Coughlin stepped up. With Coughlin, a "family-values" Ÿber-conservative, you never know what you're going to get. Sometimes he'll demand green license plates for sex offenders. Sometimes he'll talk about death certificates for aborted fetuses. Sometimes, as he did with Scene, he will tell you how Arshinkoff once made a pass at him at a Republican event. But on Monday, Coughlin blamed the media. Apparently, journalists never gave local Republicans a chance because we were too busy fawning over Obama and praising Ted Strickland.
You're right, Senator. Maybe it is time for us to pay a little more attention to you. - James Renner
Weird. So you talked to Obama in English, and two years later we found out (or guess) what we said by using our feeble high school or college French to translate what you said in English out of their French through our weak translation into sort of English that probably bears no resemblance to what you guys said to each other.
Another object lesson for the kids about why it's important to study, and why languages are important, because you never know when you will need to know a foreign our language to find out what was said by two native speakers of your native language in your native language because the only reporter covering it translated it into another language.
Weird.
I'm not against foreign languages. I loved studying French and I love the language. My aunt and my grandmother were fluent in German, and my sister and her kids are fluent in Chinese. I just never thought my French would be useful in watching a Chicago pol be interviewed by an Akron bloggeur.
Weird.
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