Musings from an overworked translator

TGIF: Victor Borge and Phonetic Punctuation January 16, 2009

Sorry to those of you who subscribe with a reader. I changed my focus mid-post and the title didn’t jibe with the content of the post, which I didn’t notice until I had already published it. So I ended up deleting the entire post and reposting it here. This is without a doubt my favorite TGIF video subject so far. I hope you like it too.

Corinne at Thoughts on Translation got on my case today because I hadn’t posted a video. I took today off after finishing a big translation yesterday and was going to skip it, but I apparently can’t disappoint my fans of TGIF. 🙂 Here is an oldie but goodie – Victor Borge. My apologies for not posting sooner.

Victor Borge is a Danish-American entertainer whose nicknames were the Clown Prince of Denmark and the Great Dane. He is also a phenomenal pianist. His act blended comedy and piano playing. He was also outspoken against the Nazis. He escaped the Nazis because he was playing a concert in Switzerland. He escaped to Finland and, according to his Wikipedia entry, “traveled to America on “the last passenger ship that made it out of Europe prior to the war.” He died in December 2000 in Greenwich, Connecticut, after more than 75 years of entertaining.

He is most famous for his phonetic punctuation bit. I remember watching him on The Electric Company and Sesame Street as a child. He is absolutely brilliant. Enjoy!

And here is a variation on the classic with one of my favorite singers of all time, Dean Martin.