Dealing Dunglish
SIS, the name of this women’s magazine, refers to sisters, as in a group of women, but SIS is slang for one sister and in a waspy way at that. I once saw “You’re such a WASP!” on Sex and the City subtitled in Dutch as “Je bent zo Amerikaans!” (You’re so American!). Since WASP stands for White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, I would have made it “Je bent zo burgelijk!” (“You’re so bourgeois!”). After all, it was aimed at Charlotte.
‘Dealen’ in Dutch means to deal drugs! If a verb needs a preposition in Dutch, English is sometimes used to circumvent using one. That’s not the case here. Remember, sloth is one of the seven sins, folks.
(Photo: Henk-Jan)
November 5th, 2005 at 4:16 pm
My inner Dunglishman is perhaps hypersensitive, but it got quite a knock when I saw the Sis ad that reads “Sis werkt, Sis leeft”. I read that as “Sis works, Sis is still alive”, which seems to be an odd thing to advertise. But as I said, probably hypersensitive. It is possible to use “leeft” in Dutch in the sense of “living it up”.
Not to mention that the working Sis was portrayed as just that, whereas the living Sis was portrayed as carrying a baby. The suggestion being that motherhood is a hobby or something like that.
I thought the WASP translation was quite cheeky, actually.
November 7th, 2005 at 9:08 am
I’ll tell you why ‘SIS’ is not cool. The slang expression ‘sister’ pronounced ‘sista’ is taken from African-American vernacular. I find it ironic that something considered to be African-American vernacular is absorbed in a waspy way for the sole reason of sounding cool. Pronounced by the wrong Dutch person, SIS sounds like a snake hissing, but that’s just me 🙂
November 7th, 2005 at 1:12 pm
Ah, but the Dutch translation of “to hiss” is “sissen”.
November 7th, 2005 at 3:06 pm
Therefore the circle is round! Lovely.
November 7th, 2005 at 5:25 pm
I’ve noticed (in an appalled way) that people seem to be abandoning the preposition that ‘deal’ requires when used in the sense of ‘cope’ or ‘manage’. Thus ‘I can deal’ is supposed to mean ‘I can deal with it/that’ rather than ‘I am able to sell drugs’ or ‘I know how to distribute playing cards’.
I consider ‘sis’ as in a form of address to one’s own sister different from AAVE ‘sister/sista’, but either way, SIS is a silly name for a magazine, especially one in Dutch. Unless it’s about keeping snakes as pets or something.