Both the Illuminated Donkey and Daddy Warblogs have blogged an interesting bit of sports news. Here's the latter's version:
An item on Italian petulance and inability to lose gracefully made me chuckle. It concerns Perugia's silly decision to sack South Korean player Ahn Jung-Hwan after he scored the goal that knocked Italy out of the World Cup. Perugia club president Alessandro Gaucci, after complaining that the player never performed for Perugia as he did for South Korea, added:
"When he arrived here, he was like a little lost goat who didn't even have the money to buy a sandwich."
Though quite why a goat would be trying to buy sandwiches is never explained. Especially at Italian prices.
Or, as the Donk notes, "there's nothing more pathetic than a goat who can't afford a sandwich".
I wonder whether the problem is in the translation. If the words were translated from English to Italian instead of the other way around, it would be obvious that the coach said "kid" and meant "child", but the translator picked the wrong meaning of "kid" and translated with "little goat" (whatever that is in Italian). Whether the same error could be made going in the opposite direction, translating from Italian to English, I do not know. Are children ever called "baby goats" in Italian slang? If so, what the Perugian said was "like a lost child who can't afford a sandwich". That would make a lot more sense. My Italian dictionary is in storage. Can any of my readers help me out? Sasha, how about you?
Posted by Dr. Weevil at July 03, 2002 11:53 PMI personally have never been called a goat in Italian, but then again I hang around with the wrong crowd...
Posted by: Sasha on July 7, 2002 06:18 PM