Filed under: Film,Shows by Orangemaster @ 10:36 am
The French version of the hit Dutch television show and Desperate Housewives copycat ‘Gooische Vrouwen’ (‘Women of het Gooi’, a rich neighbourhood of Hilversum where Dutch TV makers used to live’) is known in France as “Jardins Secrets” (Secret Gardens), is dubbed rather than subtitled and is a hit. (The Dutch subtitle shows from other countries (cheaper), while big countries like France and Germany dub everything (laws and such).
Back in 2008 when we first posted about it, “some 2.3 million people watched the first episode, which translates to a market share of 26.6%. TF1 broadcast the first three episodes back-to-back, and later during the evening the market share rose to 31.6%.
French television station TF1 is super sloppy with the introduction of the show on their website, as they claim it’s Danish. Dutch people commented in good French with a polite explanation, but the information was copy pasterd from another site with the same mistake. The blurb even implies that Amsterdam could be in Denmark! Ouille, ça fait mal !
As well, De Telegraaf tells of Linda de Mol (pic) who in the dubbed French version has a nasty low class accent, which now has me all curious. It is ironic since people of De Gooi area have a specific accent that is association with high class and a rolling ‘r’. The cast has also received criticim regarding the Gooische Vrouwen film that is coming out for the large amount of drinking that takes place in the film by a Dutch association. De Mol explains that the series was sold to Russia and China and expects nothing less that a lot of drinking in their versions as well. After all, it it’s television, not reality.
Filed under: Animals,Weird by Orangemaster @ 5:44 pm
It could be the abrupt end of summer here or something in the air, but the ‘rules are rules’ motto can sometimes goes too far and be called ‘anti-social’. Of course, you could also say it’s bad timing.
A blind and wheelchair-bound woman from Groningen was fined for throwing out her old bed in the trash too early, probably before 8 pm. She had asked a girlfriend to do it for her who obviously didn’t observe the rules. The handicapped woman plans to contest the fine.
Ironically, just today right over the border in Germany (in Dutch) a similar case was lost. Some man braked to avoid running over a poodle, and apparently the law applies only to braking for kids and not animals, effectively implying the man should have ran over the poodle to avoid the accident he caused.
In the Student Handbook 2010-2011 for students in Breda there’s apparently a two-page advert to get students, most probably girls, to work for phone sex lines. While students usually work at the supermarket for about EUR 7,50 or so an hour, talking dirty on the phone pays a cool EUR 24 an hour, which is a lot of money for a student. The advert has a funny title as well: ‘Geld verdienen met lullen’ (‘Earn money with talking’, although ‘lullen’ (infinitive verb) just happens to be the plural of ‘cocks’ as well). The students have to be 18 years of age to be hired.
Why did this make national news? Well, it preys on poor students. However, a job is a job, the company is legit and I don’t really see the problem. I know for a fact that talking dirty as a job for money is hard work because when I was a student, I used to translate such delightful phone messages before all of this was online for good money. Some of what you hear is very difficult and not funny or sexy at all. I can’t even imagine being the one answering to or saying these things on the phone for hours on end. The students deserve that EUR 24 an hour.
Back in July we posted about the Council of State which decided that farmer Joop van Ooijen had to remove the text “Jezus redt” (Jesus saves) from his roof or be fined 15,000 euro. (Feel free to read the legal take on this from Internet lawyer Arnoud Engelfriet in the comments of the link above.)
Nothwithstanding all the legal arguments and the appeals, my television zapping habit procured me with a few minutes of the farmer explaining to a talk show host that he was summoned to remove ‘the white roof tiles’ from his roof. Cut to the farmer’s son at the hardware store buying red car paint, and voilà, they painted over the roof tiles so it’s not white anymore and can still be read.
According to the Volkskrant, only one student has registered to study Frisian this year at the University of Groningen, the only university in the country that offers a Bacherlor’s and Master’s degree in the country’s second official language.
Professor Goffe Jensma said on a local radio show in Groningen that new rules allowing universities to set their own fees for second degrees was at the heart of the problem. Grytsje Nicolaij, who already has a degree as a musicologist, was planning to study Fries on the side to keep up with family and friends who spoke the language better than he did. If the university does not attract more students (how many, we don’t know) before October 1, Grytsje will have to brush up on his Frisian elsewhere.
What does Frisian sound like?
Frisian Duo Twarres had a huge hit with ‘Wêr Bisto’ (‘Live, with a Dutch translation). The girl is the guitarist, the guy is the back up singer and they are childhood friends:
Frisian model Doutzen Kroes (L’Oréal, Victoria’s Secret) promotes her mother tongue:
Yes, there’s a crisis going on and some of the grass roots entertainment is taking a mighty beating, cash-wise.
The outdoor movie theatre Pleinbioscoop (pic) in Rotterdam, located at the Lloyd Multiplein, Schiehaven, near the pittoresque Delftshaven, the old harbour, is trying to stay afloat by disallowing that people bring their own drinks. Do look at the pic, they have couches and lamps to make it look like a big living room.
The organisation claims that they will be selling drinks at a reasonable price. They have also decided to set up a ‘coat check’ for anyone who brings glass bottles by mistake. Many a venue around the world would just force you to chuck out your booze in a bin, but these people are just plain nice. You can get a ticket for your ‘bottle check’, so you can pick up your wares at the end of the movie.
On Sunday 22 August retired entrepreneur Frits Langeveld from the Dutch island of Texel where many a good beer comes from will be presenting a new beer called ‘Tessels Wrakhout’ (not the one shown here) with a real smoky taste. So smoky according to some smokers that they don’t feel like reaching for a cigarette. The key ingredient is smoked malt that is apparently not used by breweries much, although German ‘rauchbier’ has been around for ages.
The idea was that smokers now have to go outside the bar to have a smoke and that maybe smoked beer is the answer to keeping them indoors and not interrupting the fun. It’s surprising nobody in the Netherlands thought of it this way before.
I think it’s exaggerated to call it innovative, in fact doing so is symptomatic of the rampant short-sightedness in the business community. I’d call it resourceful: finally looking outside Dutch borders for answers.
Dutch Design Studio OOOMS from Eindhoven offers a multipurpose and very elegant puzzleboard to liven up your parties. It can be used as a cutting board or serving plate and more puzzleboards can be placed together like puzzle piece to make a bigger and cooler one.
I like the fact that you can easily free up a hand to greet people, which is usually a problem at parties. My only comment is that most Dutch people drink beer at parties and not wine, so the beer glass has nowhere to go.
A Russian trucker in Dordrecht involved in a bar brawl was released because the summons he received was poorly translated from Dutch into Russian using Google translate. When the trucker was being questioned at the police station, he had a Russian interpreter and claimed to have understood what he had to do, although he never signed the summons.
The Russian interpreter showed up in court, but not the trucker. She was asked to then translate what was written in the summons. Instead of (here I am translating this from Dutch) ‘you are to appear in court on 3 August 2010′, it went more like ‘you have to avoid being in court on 3 August 2010′. In Dutch, ‘vóórkomen’, with the stress on the first syllable, means ‘to appear’, while ‘voorkómen’ means ‘to prevent’.
With Google translate, the Dutch infinitive verb ‘voorkomen’ (no way to indicate which of the two identically spelled verbs you want translated) still today produced the infinitive verb ‘to prevent’ ‘предотвращать’ (imperfective aspect) and not even a hint of the perfective aspect of the same verb, ‘предотвратить’. In any decent dictionary both aspects are given so people can use the right one.
In Russian, if you pronouce the perfective verb ‘to write’ ‘написать’ with the wrong stress, you’re pissing instead of writing, so yes, stress matters.
