Help with anagrams...

[DrJones]

I need to write an article about translation, and I need an anagram that appeared on TV or cinema.
The only I can remember appeared in "The 10th Kingdom", but I only remember one part of it: "Manufactured by the Dwarves of the Dragon Mountain".

Can you write down the other part? (well, if you can build an anagram with those letters, it will be fine).

If nobody knew the other sentence, could anybody post another anagram? I really need it.
Thanks.

[Quailman]

I guess "redrum" from The Shining isn't exactly an anagram. I don't know the movie to which you refer. I seem to recall seeing an anagram in an episode of Scooby Doo.

[SaberKitty]

http://wordsmith.org/anagram is a pretty good place to look up anagrams- but if it contains names-i doubt it'll work

[Tahnan]

You can always check out http://us.imdb.com/List?tv=on&&keywords=anagram&&heading=19;anagram for a handy list of movies with anagrams. The only two on there I've seen are Sneakers ("Setec Astronomy") and L.A. Story ("How Daddy is doing").

[Logain]

Are you looking for just general anagrams that were used in the entertainment industry?

Something like the movie Sneakers, in which they came across the company name Setec Astronomy, which was anagrammed into Too Many Secrets

or, even the Doors song, which Mr. Mojo Risin' anagrams into Jim Morisson

[Logain]

I should've remembered that LA Story one Tahnan...I caught that exact scene on TV just the other weekend.

[Ghost Post]

Or what about Anna Madrigal from Amisted Maupin's Tales of the City.
The whole point of the movie was revealed in the end when they discovered (s)he had made up the name as an anagram of a man and a girl.

[Orbiting]

This may not be helpful, but there was a trend in vampire literature for anagramming, inspired by Sheridan LeFanu's 'Carmilla', in which the vampiress Carmilla was limited in choice of alias to anagrams of her original name - Cimralla, Millarca, etc.
-o-
(storehouse of worthless information)

[T McAy]

And, of course, the film "October Sky" is an anagram of the title of the book upon which it was based: Rocket Boys

[impossibleroot]

The one in Silence of the Lambs was 'Louis Friend' > 'Iron Sulfide' (fool's gold)...

[Mark]

The only one I can think of on TV was on Jonathan Creek where the killer posed as someone called Teresa Tolling, which was an anagram of the victim; Elliot Strange.

[DrJones]

Thank you everyone! The reason is that I needed an example about things that cannot be translated directly, and anagrams were one of these things.
As almost all your examples included names, which can be easily modified, there aren't very useful. It doesn't matter, because yesterday came to my mind the perfect example to my article. :-)

But that was only thanks to your posts.

[This message has been edited by DrJones (edited 04-30-2002 12:18 PM).]

[dave10000]

quote:

---

The reason is that I needed an example about things that cannot be translated directly, and anagrams were one of these things.

---

Read "Le Ton Beau de Marot," from a few years ago by Douglas Hofstadter. It's a beautiful, long book on the subject of translating the untranslatable.

Among other things in it is the English/French/German version of the rather untranslatable "Jabberwocky."

[DrJones]

Did you mean?

quote:

---

JABBERWOCKY

'Twas brilling, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome saw the fought.
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brilling, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgabe.

---

That's one of the translations I will put in the exam I'm doing for my readers.
They should know HOW to deal with these, if they read my articles.

Thanks for the Book's reference. I will include that on my article.

[dave10000]

Yes, DrJ, that's the one. How, for example, does one translate "slithy" into French, when it is sort of a combination of "slimy" and "lithe" in English. Do you just translate "slimy" and "lithe" and then try to combine them, or do you come up with a French word that "seems" like slithy. And, indeed, why stop at "slimy" and "lithe." There's also hints of "slither" and "slight" and . . . well, you get the idea.

As a wonderful instance of a translation problem (discussed by Hofstadter in the above-referenced book), there is George Perec's French novel "La Disparition" -- which is written entirely without the letter e! Do you translate it without using the letter e? Do you translate it without using the letter most frequently used in the language of translation? Do you translate it without using the vowel most frequently used in the language of translation? Do you translate it without regard to letters used or not used? How would you translate it into a non-letter-based language (such as Chinese)? Etc.

[Pigboy]

What about puns? How well do they translate?
Check the Asterix books. For some comparisons

[groza528]

I really like the Asterix books, I've been reading them in French. There are definitely some things I've determined do not translate well. For example, there's one where someone (Obelix, perhaps) was gathering mushrooms and heard about a Roman scheme. Don't remember the exact details, but then the chief said "Do you know what we're going to [faire] now?" And Obelix suggested mushroom soup. The translation error comes from the fact that the French verb 'faire' means both 'to do' and 'to make.'

[DrJones]

I love Asterix. The old spanish translator is one of the best ones, and wrote some of the best puns I've ever seen.

My article talks about puns, anagrams, misprints, japanese double reads, rigid structures (cannot use a letter, etc), and more.

Text, or intention... that's the question.

[impossibleroot]

Can't wait to read the article!

Another difficult-to-translate device would be the spoonerism; a well-oiled bicycle does *NOT* spoonerize to a well-boiled icicle in French!

[DrJones]

I finished the article, but there's a problem. I wrote the article in spanish, using Japanese and English examples.
Japanese examples could be easily translated, but... the spanish answer to english unstranslatable sentences are also untranslatable.

I could write spanish unstranslatable sentences instead, but I'm not as good as being able to find english answers to that sentences.

What could I do? Maintain english examples and explain the spanish ones? or put spanish examples and let you find an english version?