27.04.18 "The New York Times" has detected irony in Trump's description of Macron's body language:

“He’s a great guy — smart, strong, loves holding my hand,” Mr. Trump joked about his French counterpart in an Oval Office interview with The New York Times on Wednesday. “People don’t realize, he loves holding my hand — that’s good!”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/19/us/politics/trump-macron-holding-hands.html

Trump is notoriously ambiguous in his remarks. In the above mentioned utterance attributing the epithet "strong" to a man who loves holding hands with another man casts a doubt on Macron's sexual identity.

23.04.18 It sets my teeth on edge when I hear the ravings of the British about the Skripals with an invariable formula "highly likely". Don't they have the imagination to produce something new? Predictably, they are very touchy when othe versions appear:

"Russia has so far come up with more than 30 narratives for the poisoning of Sergei Skripal. It is a classic demonstration of the Stalinist disinformation technique known as maskirovka, or “little masquerade”, which is designed to sow confusion and uncertainty.

The British narrative, by contrast, remains fairly simple: Russia was behind the attack, which was carried out using high-grade, pure novichok, the Russian-made nerve agent. “Only Russia has the technical means, operational experience and motive for the attack on the Skripals . . . it is highly likely that the Russian state was responsible,” wrote Sir Mark Sedwill, Britain’s national security adviser, in a letter to Nato".

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/if-kremlin-didn-t-poison-skripals-who-did-72dd7695z

21.04.18 20 years ago the Japanese language got enriched with a neologism that sounds in Russian like павахара. It is a very strange phonetical development from the English power harassment. This is an intercultural concept deplorably familiar to everyone in the work place.

https://inosmi.ru/social/20180421/241997495.html

The Japanese have quite a stockpile of defense rules to be resorted in case of being victimized by the bullying bosses. Theoretically, we have it at our disposal too. But there are few people who dare to use it!

17.04.18 Every piece of translation is a rich convergence of transformations necessary for the “naturalness” of the target text. The greatest offence that may carry the target text to-day is “translationese” – the birth-marks of the Other.

Anti-government views are often deemed “pro-Russian”, effectively chilling freedom of expression. The intolerance of opposition media is violently visible. There have been protests and scandal over “pro-Russian views”, with broadcast studios being burnt.

https://theconversation.com/four-years-after-the-euromaidan-revolution-in-ukraine-key-gains-and-losses-90012

Антиправительственные взгляды зачастую подаются как «пророссийские», что пагубно сказывается на свободе выражения. Насаждаемая нетерпимость по отношению к оппозиционным СМИ очевидна. Их якобы «пророссийская» позиция неоднократно провоцировала протесты и скандалы и даже становилась причиной поджогов.

13.04.18 One more piece of war-mongering bluster:

Trump on the 11^th of September:

Russia vows to shoot down any and all missiles fired at Syria. Get ready Russia, because they will be coming, nice and new and “smart!” You shouldn’t be partners with a Gas Killing Animal who kills his people and enjoys it!

Россия обещает сбить все ракеты, выпущенные в Сирии. Готовься, Россия, потому что они прилетят, славные, новые и «умные!». Не будь союзником животного, которое убивает газом и наслаждается этим!

However, the desire to frighten Russia is frightfully wrong.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/06/worst-political-insults-philippine-president-barack-obama?CMP=share_btn_tw

11.04.18 The boxing metaphor shows how the Americans relish their capability to deliver big punches against Russia. A piece of war-mongering – nothing new on the Western front.

The gut-punch? Washington's secondary sanctions, which threaten to punish non-American individuals and companies doing business with the sanctioned entities in the same way they would Americans.

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2018/04/10/us-moscow-sanctions-finally-proving-a-major-game-changer-for-russia.html

Удар под дых? Именно так и можно назвать вторичные санкции Вашингтона, которые угрожают наказанием физическим лицам и компаниям, не являющимся американскими и ведущими бизнес с попавшими под санкции структурами, так же, как они угрожали бы американцам.

7.04.18 Dickense's heritage carries the traces of hate speech and racism. On 4 October 1857 Dickens wrote in a private letter to Baroness Burdett-Coutts: "I wish I were the Commander in Chief in India. I should do my utmost to exterminate the Race upon whom the stain of the late cruelties rested proceeding, with all convenient dispatch and merciful swiftness of execution, to blot it out of mankind and raze it off the face of the earth".

3.04.18 The intricacies of political discourse...

The word provocation exists in all European languages, but Russians use the word “provokatsiia” far more frequently and more often with negative modifiers (for example, “a heinous provocation,” or “a monstrous provocation”) than English-speaking countries do. In Russian, provocation may refer to a provocative action, allege a false-flag operation or simply flip the blame in any run-of-the-mill conflict.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2018/04/02/the-real-reason-russia-blames-britain-for-the-skripal-poisonings/?utm_term=.b9e93a637f31

Слово «провокация» существует во всех европейских языках, но русские употребляют его гораздо чаще, чем англоязычные страны. И гораздо чаще — с отрицательными определениями (например, «гнусная провокация» или «чудовищная провокация»). В русском языке «провокация» может означать провокационные действия, указывать на операцию под чужим флагом или просто быть средством перекладывания вины в любом самом обычном конфликте.

1.04.18 The intricacies of South African English...

The language is peppered with words of Afrikaans derivation, along with Portuguese, Hindi, Malay and indigenous African – legacies of migration, slavery and the existence of many local cultures that predate white colonisation. Everywhere I went, conversations were interrupted with little ambushes of foreign words and phrases.

“Lekker,” van Rijswijk told me as I paid for lunch one day. On seeing my confusion, she explained that it meant ‘good’. Its literal translation from Afrikaans is ‘delicious’, but its usage is so widespread beyond the context of food that it’s ‘lekker’ to get familiar with the term before visiting South Africa.

http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20171213-where-australians-cant-understand-english