When the prime minister came up with ‘rilaxx’ – in connection with the proposed barter of pilots-for-planes – that is, defecting airmen for Libyan fighter jets – one particular journalist was quick to pick up this word, and even coined the derivative ‘rilaxxament’ for it, which she then went on to repeat at least eight times in a short clip. Whatever is wrong with ħelsien?
Words constantly mispronounced include ‘Hiroshima’, ‘falcon’, ‘calf’, and, of course, names of people and places which are never presented phonetically on scripts.
Apart from that, the constant translation of English into Maltese is covered by the one-size-fits all excuse that ‘this is a live programme’.
It is annoying to listen to ‘pajjiz fuq irkoptejh’ (a country on its knees), and other literal translations of foreign idiomatic expressions that set language-lovers’ teeth on edge.
It goes without saying that outside broadcasting units are still transmitting from ‘inside’ (ġo) towns and villages, despite what the Akkademja Tal-Malti says.
It was very annoying to hear a particular presenter perpetuating the myth that Qormi is ‘officially divided into two villages’, viz. St George and St Sebastian.
This is certainly and definitely not the message the relative parish priests want to impart.
Hillary Clinton is described ad nauseam as the Amerikana Secretary of State.
Actually, the term is not supposed to describe her gender; if this were so, the word Segretarja would have to be used, too.
Something must be done about this trend of inviting guests on programmes who happen to be the presenters’ friends, but not up to scratch about the topics they talk about.
It is not only the simple things either, such as knowing that the only seismologist in Malta is Pauline Galea.
Last week, we had someone actually suggesting putting a morsel of new food on one’s finger tips, and then giving it to babies to suck, in order to help them with the process of weaning.
I thought this unhygienic trend went out with the ark.
Someone else suggested that the fun of eating globe artichokes was that you ‘simply could not’ eat them with a knife and fork. But this, too, is wrong.
I have actually done it myself, on occasion, and the process is really very simple. You hold down the individual leaf with the tines of a fork, scrape the flesh off with a knife, place it on the fork, and eat it.
Just for the record, F’Baħar Wieħed was not ‘produced by Net Television’ – at least, not the first time around. The place name is Xrob l-Għaġin, not Xuereb l-Għaġin.
And it is too simplistic to describe a tsunami as a mewġa enormi (enormous wave), demoting it to Point Break status.
• We have now seen the official music video of Paul Giordimaina’s One Life, the song with which singer Glen Vella will represent Malta at the Eurovision Song Contest 2011 in Düsseldorf next May.
Lyricist Fleur Balzan said there was “no choreography, we just left the people do what they felt like doing in front of the camera” so that the spirit of the song be kept.
PBS CEO Anton Attard quaintly interpreted this as “(not) a film where we used Glen’s song as a music bed... we made a video which expressed the feeling of the song”.
I remain ambivalent about the final result. In all, the video, the theme of which is ‘diversity/be yourself’ ironically ends up parading a series of stereotypical characters – the geek, the transvestite, the impish kid, the lovers, the female body-builder, the poseur, the break-dancers, and so forth. But Andy Warhol would love the camera work.
This was not a case of the more, the merrier: I feel sorry for the 855 people who turned up for the audition but did not make the final cut; 900 applied for their 15 minutes of fame, but only 45 were chosen.
• A letter recently appeared in The Times slating the March 1 episode of F’Salib it-Toroq. The correspondent said that he was “left incredulous (sic) with a scene portraying a married couple on the verge of separating”, wherein they tell their minor children that the decision with whom they chose to live will be definite, because that is not the way custody is determined.
Of course it isn’t. This was just a depiction of the mind-scrambling that parents do when faced with such a crisis – just as they are wont to bribe their children to bear false witness against the other parent. This is the equivalent of poetic licence.
Frederick Zammit, the script-writer, insists that whether this happens or not behind closed doors is anyone’s guess, and “what an author sets down is a matter of opinion. These things happen; there are lots of situations where couples are not legally separated and they decide who gets to keep the children.”
I tend to agree with Zammit – however, I also think some storylines (not only when it comes to F’Salib it-Toroq) are way over the top, in order to garner audiences.
Another ruse is to take series, or episodes thereof, to the big screen. You can have too much of a good thing – let alone a bad one.
Perhaps we ought to be thankful that in Malta, complaints are not about whether people from ethnic minorities are to be cast, or not, in ‘typically Maltese’ drama like the aforementioned one, as has happened with Midsomer Murders.
television@timesofmalta.com