I have to say that if I had to name something a "sparrowfish," a flounder, except perhaps for coloration, would have been very low on the list.
Heee. Yeah, I can't explain it . . . but it amused us.
Does your disaster translation survive?
My sister and I both kept copies. (Our teacher kept the original.)
(Tragically, it is not a verse translation.
<clears throat>
Wear mourning clothes, o highest toss of the dice and greedy ones, and how many there are of men who are endowed like Venus: my girl has killed her flounder, that fish, the crime of my girl, which loved her more than her flower buds -- for there was honey for her and the other knew herself so well that she was a girl, neither that one moving himself from the center, but running around how this how that, to the sun of the house and chirping: which now plows again through Tenebricus, where waves decline as they return there. And you are a bad apple, evil pigs of low birth, where everyone love war, so war to me seems like a fish. O apple fact! O evil fish! Now you sing an opera so that my girl is crying and swollen because there is rhubarb in her eyes.
I believe our general principles were "if you can mistake this for a similar word, do," "grab the word above or below it in the dictionary," "screw up the grammatical relationship of the elements," and "if all else fails, take the most obscure gloss available."
no subject
Heee. Yeah, I can't explain it . . . but it amused us.
Does your disaster translation survive?
My sister and I both kept copies. (Our teacher kept the original.)
(Tragically, it is not a verse translation.
<clears throat>
Wear mourning clothes, o highest toss of the dice and greedy ones, and how many there are of men who are endowed like Venus: my girl has killed her flounder, that fish, the crime of my girl, which loved her more than her flower buds -- for there was honey for her and the other knew herself so well that she was a girl, neither that one moving himself from the center, but running around how this how that, to the sun of the house and chirping: which now plows again through Tenebricus, where waves decline as they return there. And you are a bad apple, evil pigs of low birth, where everyone love war, so war to me seems like a fish. O apple fact! O evil fish! Now you sing an opera so that my girl is crying and swollen because there is rhubarb in her eyes.
I believe our general principles were "if you can mistake this for a similar word, do," "grab the word above or below it in the dictionary," "screw up the grammatical relationship of the elements," and "if all else fails, take the most obscure gloss available."