The other side glass

This isn't the Masal Bugduv update promised a couple of posts ago -- that's still to come. Meanwhile, here are a few Massi morsels.

I'm not sure if anyone else has reported this, but When Saturday Comes acknowledged their error last Friday in their Weekly Howl email newsletter (UPDATE: link), pointing out that the article in which they trumpeted Bugduv (is it right to mention an imaginary person only by their surname?) was "otherwise illuminating". Which it was. Unless...

Unless the whole piece was a sham! Maybe there isn't really a "Transdniestria separatist movement" at all! Maybe there's no such place! Sure, there's a Wikipedia entry for it, but what does that prove? Well? Well?...

No, no...sorry about that. Of course it's real. But do you see what all this has done to me?

WSC linked to a similar story from 2003, when Leeds were linked to a player who only existed on the Championship Manager database. Unless...no, just kidding.

Speaking of The Wik, as probably no-one calls it, your favourite phantom footballer now has his own page.

The blog The Freeman's Journal has detailed the whole affair in handy interactive timeline form.

Somehow, amidst the various stuff that's been written about all of this, I stumbled upon the Vietnamese version of the BBC daily transfer gossip round-up. Now, writing about the strange qualities of automated translation is cheap and lazy, I know. But I was quite taken with some of Google Translate's brave efforts to fill the southeast-Asian-shaped gap in my education. (Here is the English version.)

"Gossip cloumn" becomes "chili party" (though in the sidebar it's "party margins").

In a civil service office somewhere, Angelos Charisteas didn't score the winner in the Euro 2004 final, he "has recorded the promotion decision for Greek team at Euro 2004 resolution".

From now on, instead of "broke down in tears", I'm going to use "turned khoc".

West Ham are "China's team West Ham". Chelsea are "China defense club Chelsea". Hey, it's going to happen sooner or later -- may as well get used to the idea.

My favourite, though, is the translation for "transfer gossip":

Rumor anticipate the demise