themadcat-art - Tumblr blog

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Okay non-European tumblr, I’m gonna explain to you why ‘white’ isn’t as simple here as it is in the rest of the world

- Shades of white in Europe range from ‘freshly fallen snow’ to ‘I am frequently mistaken as being from the Middle East’

- White European is a thing. When you fill out a form, under ethnicity, there are several options for white; white British, white European, white other. Because people make that distinction

- There are Europeans who don’t class their ethnicity as their skin colour, but as their nationality. I have family who don’t think of themselves as white, they just think of themselves as Italian and don’t really give much thought to their skin colour

- People here in Britain always question if darker skinned white Europeans are ‘actually white’. I get it a lot myself. My response is always ‘well I’m not anything else, so obviously I must be’

- Despite being white, a lot of Europeans from Italy, Greece, Spain etc, don’t feel white in the traditional sense. We’re not white like white British people. We’re not white like white Americans. We’re our own white. White British is one thing. White Italian is another thing. White Greek is another, etc

- Which is why we have this notion here in Europe of ‘nationality over race’. Being white isn’t as important as where you’re from

- So this really only becomes an issue if you’re an immigrant

- So being white in Europe doesn’t save you from racial discrimination, because sure, you’re technically white, but you’re not white white. Not the right white

- Here in England, Europeans with really blatantly foreign names, such as myself, find it more difficult to get job interviews, because they take one look at our name and don’t bother reading the rest of the CV. A guy I know was actually told by his boss to reduce the pile of CVs he had by ‘chucking away any with a name you can’t fucking pronounce’

- And then even when you do get an interview, half the time you walk into the joint several shades darker than everyone else and feel like you’ve walked into the ‘Swedish supermodel’ clubhouse and you just know you’re not getting hired

This is all basic stuff and it’s very much taken for granted here. Race and ethnicity are not as clear cut, so it can be very confusing for non-Europeans to wrap their heads around. Which is fine. But I implore you to stay in your lane, because when you say things like ‘no white person anywhere in the world ever knows what it’s like to face racial discrimination’, it’s really fucking offensive to all of the European immigrants who are denied jobs, harassed by the police and beaten by racists, because foreign is foreign to these people, and they don’t give a shit if you’re technically white. So when you mean white American, say white American. 

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Credits: Michele Bruson

“Parabola discendente del divanaro scettico medio”

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Workplace Chronicles - part 3 (it’ll never be over)

The check-in date of Mrs. Mickey is getting closer. 

Me: So, I looked for pizza restaurants in the district you told me, and these are three places for you to check. Please let me know what to reserve.

Rita: What? These are all too distant from the drop off point with the driver! What were you thinking? 

Me *checks the map again*: No, they aren’t. They are in the Blabla area, as you asked.

Rita: No, I didn’t. But I guess we’re stuck with this now.

Workplace Chronicles - part 1

A bit of background. I am a personal assistant and I’m the only one working there. We’ll call my Boss “Rita” for privacy reasons.

Me *panicking because, as usual, nothing is going as planned*: Excuse me, Rita, what’s more urgent? Should I call the mechanic first or set up your meeting with Mary? Actually, you also need to make an appointment with the doctor. Which one should I do first? Rita: Ah, lovely, yes. Thank you! *disappears for 3 hours*

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Workplace Chronicles - part 3 (here we go again!)

Context: Rita is more and more distracted lately. She ignores my messages and doesn’t answer the phone. I have come to terms that I won’t get anything done.

Me *spends two days completing a list of Kosher safe places in our area, with opening times, links to menus, contacts and short descriptions. Has to translate everything because we aren’t an English speaking country, but most of our clientele speaks just English*. There you go! You can send everything to Mrs. Mickey.

Rita *ignores it for two weeks straight and then* I really need the translated menus. I sent an email two weeks ago to Mrs. Mickey and had to do all the work myself but it’s not enough! Can you still do it?

Workplace Chronicles - part 1

A bit of background. I am a personal assistant and I’m the only one working there. We’ll call my Boss “Rita” for privacy reasons.

Me *panicking because, as usual, nothing is going as planned*: Excuse me, Rita, what’s more urgent? Should I call the mechanic first or set up your meeting with Mary? Actually, you also need to make an appointment with the doctor. Which one should I do first? Rita: Ah, lovely, yes. Thank you! *disappears for 3 hours*

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My clients when they send me a text to translate that is 150 words longer than agreed and I say I will charge them more.

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words: regret, remorse, forgiveness

Very interesting! Thank you first of all for the words!

Regret: rammarico or dispiacere. Rammarico is how we call the feeling of regret about having done something, while dispiacere is the feeling of being sorry and will to make up for the mistake done. I looked up the etymology but apparently we got it straightly from Latin and we kept is pretty much unchanged.

Remorse: rimorso or rimpianto. We use both to translate “remorse”. They have a fundamentally different connotation. Rimorso is the awareness of having missed out on something or of having done something wrong, while rimpianto has more a note of nostalgia. Rimorso actually comes from the Latin verb “remordere”, which roughly translate to “bite back”. So we can say rimorso conveys the idea of having something that’s biting your soul/conscience as a reminder of what has been done or not done.

Even though, as a side note, I would say that in standard Italian, even though we are aware of the different connotation of all these words, we do use them in the same contexts. It also depends a lot from region to region. 

Forgiveness: we have a word, which is perdono. Funny enough, it has almost the same structure as “forgive”, since it’s made up of per (for) + dono (gift/give). Forgiveness is something that has to be given freely. The English version comes from the Old Germanic language, and the Italian one comes from Latin but the general idea behind it is the exact same: to free someone from the debt/guilt.

Send me words in English and you’ll get a translation+some nerdy things about etymology, linguistics and derivation because why not :)

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Send me an English word and I'll translate it to my native language

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Sometimes I look at my “want to read” on Goodreads and ask myself “Why did I every want to read this?!”

I wonder about that a lot. Was I drunk when I added those titles? I guess I’ll never know.

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Quick reminder that not having to worry if your name is spelled with all the right diacritics (accento, síneadh fada, mjagkij snak, virgulilla or trema, add anything you like to this list) is a form of privilege. Not every keyboard has all the letters of all the alphabets, but we live in the era of internet. Just look for the name and copy-paste it.

It’s Hansjörg, not Hansjorg.

It’s Niccolò, not Niccolo.

It’s Krõõt, not Kroot.

It’s Zdzisław, not Zdzislaw.

It’s Jiří, not Jiri.

Here are some for you to copy, featuring letters from Italian, French, Polish, Lithuanian, Icelandic, Czech, Slovak, Estonian, Swedish, Norwegian (Bokmål), Spanish, Hungarian, Irish, Slovak and Danish. 

à è é ì ò ù ý À È É Ì Ò Ù Ý

Ñ ñ

ǎ ě  ǐ  ǒ  ǔ Ǎ Ě  Ǐ Ǒ Ǔ - Č č Š š  Ž ž Ř ř

ê û ô â î Ê Û Ô Â Î

ä ё ï ö ü õ  Ä Ё Ï Ö Ü Õ

a̋ e̋ i̋ m̋ ő ű A̋ E̋ I̋ M̋ Ő Ű

ł Ł

å Å

ø Ø

æ Æ þ Þ ð Ð

ė Ė ę Ę  ų Ų ū Ū

(I’m aware there are many more letters in many more languages! I’ll be adding to this in the future!) 

Feel free to add things from your language’s alphabet!

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If everyone in the painting is extremely small and you don’t understand what’s going on: it’s Flemish art, BUT if everyone (men and women alike) looks like Putin, then it’s Jan van Eyck.

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This is spot on lol

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Workplace Chronicles - part 2

Me *filing some invoices she hadn’t scanned for me in months*: Rita, you ought to tell me what these are about, or I won’t know where to put them. For example, this one. Is it French Management or French Providers?

Rita *points at the invoice*: It’s French. Now, sorry, I have to rush out bye.

Workplace Chronicles - part 1

A bit of background. I am a personal assistant and I’m the only one working there. We’ll call my Boss “Rita” for privacy reasons.

Me *panicking because, as usual, nothing is going as planned*: Excuse me, Rita, what’s more urgent? Should I call the mechanic first or set up your meeting with Mary? Actually, you also need to make an appointment with the doctor. Which one should I do first? Rita: Ah, lovely, yes. Thank you! *disappears for 3 hours*

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Workplace Chronicles - part 1

A bit of background. I am a personal assistant and I’m the only one working there. We’ll call my Boss “Rita” for privacy reasons.

Me *panicking because, as usual, nothing is going as planned*: Excuse me, Rita, what’s more urgent? Should I call the mechanic first or set up your meeting with Mary? Actually, you also need to make an appointment with the doctor. Which one should I do first? Rita: Ah, lovely, yes. Thank you! *disappears for 3 hours*

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CALLING ALL WRITERS AND ARTISTS AND ANYONE WHO,, LIKES DOING ARTSY THINGS

Nobodys going to see this but LOOK- a couple of people (me and some friends) are making a visual novel/dating sim, and I dont want this project to die! So whoever out there likes to write dialogue or stories, or someone out there who likes to draw backgrounds,, lots and lots of backgrounds,, PLEASE MESSAGE ME, either here or on discord (jereby#0649) also we're all kind of game making amateurs, so please, be patient with our stupidity-- okay thank you goodnight my cat is sitting on me

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@lazysarcasm--dazzlingbs Something classic: Gilbert Cesbron - Lost dogs without collars Something new: Sarah Langan - Good Neighbors Something good: Ian McEwan - Black Dogs

I’m doing this game

It started on Instagram, people tell me their favourite animal and I match them with a book.

I am a reader (professionally, in the sense I read books for publishers to decide on the acquisition of their rights for translation) and I want to spread some good titles!

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Hi, would you mind posting your Italian translation of my vocabulary list as a separate post and not as reply to the Hungarian vocabulary list, please? :)

Ah sure! Sorry! I’ll do it right away!

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Or your classroom or uni auditorium randomly has 1400s frescos. No in between.

italian academia. it's like dark academia, except the the walls of your school building have long cracks running all the way down to the floor because they haven't been fixed since the irregular construction boom of the 80s, one of the ceiling lamps creaks and flickers ominously, you drink espressos from the machine, and the most common crime is not murder but driving down the corridors in a scooter

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Every time you see this post on your dashboard you have to go learn one new word in your target language