From: Dan Parmenter <dan@lec.com>
Subject: (urth) The Spanish word "Ayuntamiento"
Date: 10 Jan 2001 15:29:54 

From: "The Laughing Skull" <thelaughingskull@hotmail.com>

> 3) The word 'Ayuntamiento' in Spanish means "copulation."  Seeing as how the
> cause lots of problems for Silk, could this mean that they're "The Fuckers?"

Okay, I'm no expert on Spanish, but I do happen to be employed as a
lexicographer in the machine translation industry and since one of the
projects that we've been developing is an English to Spanish
translation system, I just happen to have a team of Spanish
translators at my disposal (shades of Woody Allen and Marshall
McLuhan, no?).  I consulted them (and their dictionaries including
www.diccionarios.com, which you can have a look at yourself) about the
word "ayuntamiento".  The "copulation" meaning is not common and two
of our Spanish translators (from Peru FWIW) were unfamiliar with its
use in this sense.  Apparently it's formal, often seen as
"ayuntamiento carnal" and so one might guess that perhaps it's like
the English term "sexual congress".  I think it's a bit of a stretch
to assume that this is what Wolfe had in mind.

Personally, I'm still wondering if Wolfe's characters drink their mate
with a bombilla (the silver strainer straw used to consume mate in
Argentina).

Lex Shellac


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