Your Letters
18:38 UK time, Thursday, 27 August 2009
You definitely need a voting mechanism in the caption competition - there are certainly good ones, and one wants to thumb them up like Facebook, or better yet rate them out of 10.
Utku Er, London
"Every sentence ends in a coma" (quote of the day). Isn't that why Big Brother is being discontinued?
Graham, Purmerend, Netherlands
Why single out medieval French poetry? Shakespeare, like that other tedious English pastime, cricket, would induce a coma in anyone.
Tony Mactire, Glasgow, Scotland
Rob, I hate to get technical about this, but the woman in the picture is using a desktop, not a laptop (Wednesday letters). As for her hand position, the happy looks on all faces (four if you count both pictures) suggests she is pressing escape to end a 250-minute long PowerPoint presentation.
Joel Horne, Tokyo, Japan
Does anyone else think that the looks rather like a boat with wake coming off the back?
Basil Long, Nottingham
Can I nominate Dr Power from as Best Potential Superhero Name?
AK, Ipswich, UK
Following from "acid herbs" (Wednesday letters), I visited a restaurant in La Rochelle. The menu was so badly translated that my friend photographed every page for posterity. They offered delights including "Salad of barrister to crabs", "Miller's wife field" and "Salad unroasted and string bags of anchovy". The most impressive dish was called "Let us award a medal to of eel-pout to the swim dips in the sauce Noilly".
Rob Foreman, London, UK
Monitor note: I'll have what she's having...
My personal favourite for a translation was at a restaurant in southern Spain. It offered the wonderful "hand grenade" flavoured ice cream. A real taste explosion...
My wife translated the Spanish version as "pineapple".
Roger Pickard, London
Monitor note: And her...
On a recent holiday to France the pizza menu contained these confusing translations: "let us pepper" and "let us lard" for poivrons and lardons (you need to understand a bit of French to get those) and the disturbing "goat tackle" for chevre, meaning goats' cheese.
John, Belgium
Re "pimp" for Keith, Ian Mayor and Web Monitor. Language evolves; get over it or learn Sanskrit.
Emma Daw, Rockville, MD, US
Rachel of Minnetonka (Wednesday letters), you had me worried there with your sudden knowledge of the Australian climate. I've had to check on the whereabouts of your home city - and it's where I thought it was. Then I had to check if it was anywhere near this place. And it isn't.
Anne, Bucks
Did you invent the term "annualism" simply in order to write I can find no other reference to the term anywhere, and the usual definition of annual or annualist is of something that happens repeatedly every year, rather the opposite of something that occurs for a year as a one-off.
George, Cambridge, UK
The 
