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That’s just too priceless not to share.

For now, you can buy the or you can buy the beautiful paragraph-less print version from any number of great bookstores . . .

Speaking to a crowd of supporters, Margaret Thatcher, as played by Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady, explains what she would do as prime minister: “Crush the working class, crush the scum, the yobs.”

At least that is a scene from a pirated version of the film in Russia, which has been inadvertently reviewed by one of the country’s top film critics without realising that some rather pointed changes to the script had been made.

The pirated Russian translation of the film, voiced over in a monotone by one man, depicts Thatcher as a bloodthirsty, Hitler-admiring leader, whose fondest desire is to destroy the working class. While some of her critics might say this is an accurate representation of her plans, even her fiercest enemy would concede the Russian version takes it too far. [. . .]

In a scene from the original film, two Conservative advisers tell Thatcher that she needs to soften her image after they watch her being interviewed on television. In the Russian version, which has been dubbed to have her say that she would crush the working class, an adviser responds: “Of course you went a bit over the top … One of them [the workers] could be literate and have a television and see everything and tell all the rest,” he says, “and then rumours would spread that you are a pitiless, heartless bitch.”

That’s all fine and good. But what’s funny is that they have a in there, but under the name “Lucas Klein.”

Lucas is a great guy, a good translator, and is soon to be featured in our series, but we are two separate people. (Although my mother’s maiden name is “Klien”’ so maybe we’re like slightly skewed doppelgangers or something.)

9: Lord of the Rings – J R R Tolkien

The best I can say about this book is that it was a very useful tool at school for helping to choose your friends. Carrying a copy of Tolkien’s monstrous tome was the equivalent of a leper’s bell: ‘Unclean! Unclean!’ I knew I would have nothing in common with anyone who had read it. Their taste in music, clothes, television, everything was predetermined by their devotion to Gandalf. Without a shadow of a doubt, in a few years, these people would be going to Peter Gabriel gigs and reading Dune.

3: War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy

Way, way too long.

2: The Iliad — Homer

The very idea that you are somehow culturally incomplete without knowledge of Homer is ridiculous. The Iliad is one of the most boring books ever written and it’s not just a boring book, it’s a boring epic poem; all repetitive battle scenes with a lot of reproaching and challenging and utterances escaping the barrier of one’s teeth and nostrils filling with dirt and helmet plumes nodding menacingly. There’s a big fight between Achilles and Hector and that’s about it.

Which sounds potentially boring until you read some of the linguistic screw-ups he cites in the book:

Take the Australian diplomat in France who tried to tell his French audience that as he looked back on his career, he saw it was divided in two parts, with dull postings before life in Paris.

“When I look at my backside, I find it is divided into two parts,” Woolcott quotes the diplomat as telling his audience.

or

Woolcott says the former Australian prime minister Bob Hawke left his Japanese audience bewildered when he used the Australian colloquial phrase “I am not here to play funny buggers” to dismiss a pesky question from Japanese officials.

“For Japanese interpreters, however, this was a real problem. They went into a huddle to consult on the best way to render ‘funny buggers’ into Japanese,” writes Woolcott. The interpreters then told the audience: “I am not here to play laughing homosexuals with you.”

That’s why we need more translation programs in the world. (All via .)