Friday, 31 January 2003

Secret Decoder Rings

Glenn Reynolds links to Rand Simberg's inspired glossary for decoding various languages, including the variant of English used on the New York Times op-ed page and in translations of speeches by Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schröder. For example:

"let the inspections continue":

Allow more time for a few dozen people to literally cluelessly wander around a country hundreds of thousands of square miles in area, searching for things that the Iraqi government has no intention of letting them find, and are hidden in private homes, or mosques, or presidential "palaces" (some of which are themselves the size of typical western cities), or in caves that we don't even know exist, or that are moved just prior to the threat of an actual search in any of these areas, in order to continue to delay military action, in the slim hope that some other means of delay can be found while this one continues or that the weather will get too hot, or that W will forget why he's doing this, in order to put off forever the day that we actually remove Saddam Hussein from power.

As a dry run, you can try it out with this article; it'll make it much more coherent.