Wednesday, July 1, 2009

We are the biggest small country in the world

Still working on another Slovenian text written for foreign tourists. I keep cringing, it's so embarrassing. There's this need to make everything they are trying to sell appear not only pretty decent and kind of nice and interesting, but of unique significance, world renown and special import. This is so typical. I always suffer when I have to translate their poetic gushing, because it sounds so preposterous and overblown in English.

Instead of saying, you know, hey, we have this cool cave, it's quite long and dark and ancient, and you can walk all the way through it, and see all the mighty limestone formations and caverns, and feel the vastness and the isolation and the strangeness of this environment. Here are some pictures, it was quite a trip for us exploring this and seeing how it goes on and on and opens into a huge hidden underworld, and now we invite you to share that, you get to discover it too.

No, the first thing they have to tell you that this cave, or this type of horse, or whatever, is well-known throughout the world, making you as the foreign tourist feel a) stupid and uneducated for not knowing about it or b) cynical and disdainful of how they overestimate their renown. Next thing they find for you is a bunch of superlatives and extremes, so that you don't have to appreciate what's there for its own merits, for what you can see and experience from it, but for the fact that you now have been informed it is "the first underground wetland in the world to ever have been entered into the Ramsar Convention" (wow!), "the widest known sinking stream in all of Slovenia", "the brightest green gem of the Karst", "the most important building in the village", "the most distinctive smell of all dry meat products" (anywhere in the world I assume). And well gosh, even Pliny the Elder liked the wine made in this region, so it must be good. To top it off, they let you know what is beautiful and gorgeous, what you will love and admire, what we all should appreciate, and that you will certainly be impressed. And now you are good to go. Gah.

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