Surreal reports and Malcolm Hardee Awards mistranslations

All publicity is good publicity, especially if it’s extraordinarily surreal.

We announced the Malcolm Hardee Award shortlist yesterday and, today, there was a very funny report on the nominees in The Scotsman, but also a wonderfully surreal online report which I can only assume was cobbled-together from other reports and put through a particularly dodgy piece of automatic translation software.

It begins “Comedian Stewart Lee has been beheld unintentionally compelling Japanese deed the Frank Chickens who were not conducting at this year’s Fringe….” and then goes downhill linguistically.

As the Malcolm Hardee Awards are, in part, a search for the bizarre, this is a fitting report and I know Malcolm would certainly have approved.

Click here if you fancy a surreal trip through the English language.