Textappeal Blog

The News

An ad for the film “Wanted” showing an “almost naked” actress Angelina Jolie shooting and kissing has been banned in the UK by the official British advertising watchdog (ASA).

The ASA says in its ruling:
“The ad (…) depicted several guns being fired by both the male and female leads and (the ASA) considered that, in conjunction with the on-screen text and voice-over that stated “Angelina is blazingly sexy” and “The coolest movie of the year” the overall impression was that using guns was sexy and glamorous. We concluded the ad could be seen to condone violence by glorifying or glamorising the use of guns. On this point the ad breached CAP (Broadcast) TV Advertising Standards Code rules 6.2 (Violence and cruelty) and 7.4.1 (Mental harm).”
For the full ASA’s ruling: http://tinyurl.com/c4ek35

Behind the News

Although gun crime is much lower in Britain than for instance in the United States, sensitivity to an alluring portrayal of violence, particularly when targeting youth, is high. This is due to the very recent emergence and growth of teenage knife and gun crime as a cultural phenomena.

The news:

On Friday March 6^th, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Geneva to help mend ties between the two nations. She gave Mr. Lavrov a mock ‘reset’ button to symbolise the diplomatic attempt – however, the button in Russian actually read ‘overloaded’ or ‘overcharged’ – not ‘reset’ as intended. An embarrassing moment for the new Secretary of State, though both played it off, and in any case pushed the button together. The gift referenced a comment from Vice President Joe Biden on resetting ties with Russia following years of friction.

Behind the news:

This is yet another case of translation gone wrong! Despite the alleged ‘hard work’ of Clinton’s team, it still didn’t turn out right.

The news:

Tom Cruise was recently in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to promote his new film Valkyrie. He spoke to the audience with a few words in Spanish, saying ‘hola’ and ‘gracias’ in an attempt to endear himself to the local population. However, he only displayed his ignorance, unaware that in Brazil the population is Portuguese speaking.  To add insult to injury, he later expressed his fondness for the tango, which is a Latin dance, not from Brazil, but with origins in neighbouring Argentina.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,487451,00.html

Behind the news:

While clustering countries, particularly by region, is both necessary and pragmatic from a business standpoint, it is still important to bear in mind regional differences. This is an obvious case of regional variation – a completely different language is spoken in Brazil vs. the rest of South America with which it shares borders. But many people are not aware that there are differences in the Spanish spoken between countries in much of Latin America, both in terms of grammar and vocabulary. The same is true in the Middle East region, where again, we often see a broad clustering of nations with little note of variances in dialect and culture for example between the Gulf states, Egypt, and Lebanon!