"Crisis" mentality infects China
From the recent meeting between Putin and Wang Yi (Director of the Office of the Central Foreign Affairs Commission of the Chinese Communist Party):
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Archive for Tropes
Shitshows, shitholes, and shitstorms
I don't know who was responsible for first labeling the Trump-Biden debate a "shitshow", but the word has been much talked about during the last couple of days.
Nathan Hopson wrote in:
Well, obviously I want to know how the world is translating "shit show." You surely don't have to ask why.
French, the other language I read my news in, can fall back on un merdier or un spectacle de merde, both of which appear to be also liberally sprinkled in social media today.
Japanese famously doesn't have a whole lot of obscenities, but fortunately shit is one of them.
Asahi, Japan's #2 paper gave us:
Shit show（くそみたいなショー）
kuso mitai na shō = a show like shit
(FWIW, Yahoo Japan's realtime search of "shit show" (on Twitter, etc.), has many examples, mostly referencing the Asahi article.)
IMHO, it's sad that we have to fall back on a simile here. Takes some of the oomph out of the gut punch that was our national horror show.
How is the rest of the world press dealing with this "spectacle of shit"?
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"Crisis = danger + opportunity" in America and in PRC official media
From Gillian Hochmuth:
Thank you for your great explanation of the reasons behind the famous Kennedy "crisis" misquote. When I was in high school, I had a friend who was Chinese and spoke Mandarin fluently, who explained it to my US History class after the teacher quoted Kennedy. That was over 20 years ago and I remembered that his quote was wrong, but could not remember the explanation I was given well enough to explain it to someone else.
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