Alice Roberts posted an interesting problem posed to a translator of one of her books.
https://twitter.com/thealiceroberts/status/1425444246321041414?s=21
https://twitter.com/thealiceroberts/status/1425444247776514052?s=21
I suspect a translator would need to be of a certain age as well as having a good knowledge of British culture to recognise the Smash advertisement.
The course L101 has a Block on language and society and this obviously involves some discussion of language and politics and political protests. I have recently seen some quite interesting posters and pieces of grafitti in Bristol that reflect the political and social situation.
The first one is subverting some of the advice about recommended behaviour to avoid contracting Covid. This means it is making an intertextual link to texts most people who pass it will have seen and slogans like "face, space, hands."
The second multimodal text is a piece of grafitti that also makes use of an assumed knowledge that Mussolini was known as "Il Duce". This has been changed to "Il Dunce" with the use of "dunce" suggesting that Johnson is even less intelligent than Mussolini.
I saw the following poster yesterday and it links to some of the themes of some English language courses at the Open University. The use of « the thing » rather than Covid is perhaps euphemistic but is perhaps also an inter textual link to the film of the same name.
The picture from the film Betty Blue is also a link to the product of the shop - it rents videos and also arranges for small scale screenings of films. The reference to Betty Blue might also relate to the use of a French phrase at the end.
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