Culture: Language: Idiom
A Universal Frame of Reference   (0)  [vote for, against]
a country specific translation of cultural references

The system would be similar to thesaurus in that it would provide alternative words. The main difference here would be that commonly used English phrases would be mapped to their equivalent in American English, a further refinement would be a regional version allowing Scouse to be mapped to Estuary English.

This would have the advantage of maintaining local dialects and language shortcuts, but maintaining the understandability. For example in the potteries region the word Duck is used where Chuck or Love maybe used else where.
-- engineer1, Feb 16 2004

US/UK dictionary http://www.peak.org...tionary/dictionary/
Seems quite comprehensive. [kropotkin, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 05 2004]

BG-Map dictionary http://www.bg-map.com/us-uk.html
Thematic British<->American dictionary. [kropotkin, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 05 2004]

Marie Antoinette http://en.wikipedia...ki/Marie_Antoinette
Look near the end of "life as queen". [Laughs Last, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 05 2004]

Marie Antoinette http://www.straight...lassics/a2_334.html
Say what? [Laughs Last, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 05 2004]

Baked in a very limited way. The repair manuals I use to repair driveway reoilers (British sports cars) have an American - English dictionary in the front.
-- GenYus, Feb 16 2004


You can already get dictionaries for translating between UK and American English. (See link.)
-- kropotkin, Feb 16 2004


Some people talk about "international English" as being the English people learn to speak when they learn English as a second language but being devoid of slang, euphemisms and colloquial terms. So no "run it up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes" or no "he's not on the level" but plenty of "we will have to find out how people react to this" and "he is untrustworthy".

However the diversity of English is incredible as people will find when they type "slang dictionary" into google and marvel at other English speaking groups' (which can be as small as individual cities in the UK) pet phrases, words and expressions.

Anyway this is largely baked.
-- Aristotle, Feb 16 2004


this may be baked, however i failed to mention another aspect, such as marie anntoinets famois "let them eat cake"- which sounds upper class and stupid until you realise that french law of the time stated that if a baker ran out of bread they had to sell cake at the price the bread would have been.
-- engineer1, Feb 17 2004


There was no such law. That line was invented, and later attributed to her. See links.

As an aside, my history professors all maintained that "cake" referred to the caked-on burnt remains inside the oven.
-- Laughs Last, Feb 17 2004


What flavour/flavor of cake/caike would that be/bee?
-- python, Feb 17 2004



random, halfbakery