With the Anglo-Saxon plot in tatters and Jewish machinations a non-starter, some strategic paranoia for Mr Zapatero. (Like: Is Mendelssohn’s Elijah a secret weapon of German subversion?)

The Spanish, making progress with a backlog of untranslated English snowclones?

A fragment from Italo Calvino’s quasi-17th century folk romance, Il visconte dimezzato/The cloven viscount, uses storks as a portent of battle. Several unconnected 2nd century Greek accounts might appear to do the same, perhaps particularly if one’s a lazy sod and doesn’t read anything but scraps of stuff on Google Books.

How would you describe the relationship of the Slav Francisco with his mother?

Why and how the 17th century Portuguese tropical medicine specialist, Aleixo de Abreu, tried to prevent proles from reading his cure for scurvy.

A Portuguese menagerie of sozzledness.

Humiliating linguistic error in PR for Arcadi Espada’s new online newspaper

Google translates the “I’m feeling lucky” button into Spanish as “Voy a tener suerte”, which is closer to “It’s my lucky day.” So, easy meat for ventura24.es, which wants to associate a brand for losers with one where you really do win (almost) every time you play. Google may be an addiction, but it isn’t [...]

Is Mr Barbecue Bunny’s sardonic grin pre- or post-mortem?

Its teachers are raging butterflies, says a 16th century music publishing entrepreneur.

It’s not what you steal, it’s the way that you steal it.

A Dutch compliment becomes a French insult.

A Sicilian says it ain’t.

Do Spanish speakers get more excited about “defective” accents than English speakers?

Between-wars texts about Zaragoza by Germans who appear never to have visited the place.

Proud English cock, limp Latin hen: the binary opposition of English and Spanish fowls as a metaphor for the contrast between growing British military might and declining Spanish power.

The strange shrieks of theatrical monsters often don’t require translation.

And an explanation of why “La gata sobre el tejado de zinc” is, in metallurgical-roofing terms, an inappropriate translation of “Cat on a hot tin roof”.

Xenophobic atavism in the 1640 Reapers Revolt.

Link love for 05/06/2009.