There is a nice little story about a piece translated into English, where a somewhat lazy linguist just got on with the job of doing a literal version of the original piece in a word for word language conversion. In the original language, having matters in hand and under control uses a horse riding metaphor where the rider uses a thigh grip to command the horse.

Literally the metaphor reads something like controlling (the animal) between one's legs, and the same is said of any problem that one needs to master - in the original language. The translated piece read, somewhat quaintly, that the ‘event is well under way as everything is between my groins’ (sic). Of course, one may laugh at the suggestion, unless it is a spiky matter, which certainly would bring tears to anyone's eyes.

Last Thursday, a re-reading of the Bloomsberg title piece was needed, as the word 'bottoms' surely seemed out of place: "Bwin Bottoms on EU Test of German Gaming Monopoly". Now, we know that Bwin is not on a bottoms up situation of late, especially in Argentina where they are being taken to court on claims of illegal gaming and advertising.

So it was not too difficult to see that with the possible ending of German gaming monopoly practices, Bwin's stock may indeed bottom out at the current price of its shares, which have lost a third of their value in the last 12 months mainly as a consequence of US prohibitive online gaming legislation.

So there we have it, not only do lazy linguists inadvertently delve into groins, but leading media fail in or dispense with the use of propositions, which can make such a difference when dealing with the serious side of gaming. Of course it could be an over simplification of the English language by our American cousins, who say they are pissed when they mean they are annoyed or thoroughly pissed off, as are editors who have to take groins in hand and get to the bottom of very suspect copy! (E-04.18.08)

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