There's no accounting for taste

Categories: music, life, translation

Date: 26 May 2008 19:26:22

A few years ago, some friends and I used to watch the Eurovision Song Contest for a bit of fun. We would each score the entries on dress sense, or lack of it, quality of the song, the "dancing", where we would place the song in the final and try to second guess the order in which the good citizens of Europe would place the songs. We also enjoyed Terry's gentle ribbing of the whole thing.

Terry's commentary has now become completely predictable. How many ways are there of saying "What a surprise that X country voted for its neighbour Y"? It is scarcely his fault; it is as plain as the nose on your face that there is unashamed favouritism and, as a result, the whole scoring exercise, which takes as long as the actual performance element of the show, is simply boring.

It is difficult in many respects to achieve a sense of parity from a contest which is so wide ranging. Unlike athletics where someone wins because they run the fastest or jump the highest, this contest is not judging like with like; a ballad versus a rock song, a pop song versus a traditional folk-style song. The only thing I can suggest to overcome the "vote for my mates" syndrome is to give the acts numbers (i.e. not reveal the country's name) and ask people to vote - or better still, have a jury drawn from all the countries knocked out in previous rounds.

I watched the show on iPlayer this year. This had the great advantage of being able to fast forward after the first verse and chorus of each song thus reducing the agony by two thirds. I'm not sure the UK deserved to come joint last. It was the first time I'd heard the song and I thought it was better than many others (what *was* the Spanish entry about?!). We drew last place with Germany and Poland. Less than 24 hours after the show I have no recollection whatsoever of the German entry - and all I remember of Poland's entry is the mesmerising dress the singer wore.

I expect there is more I could say on this subject but as I am only on page 51 and still have 5 pages of today's allocation of translation to finish (no Bank Holiday for me!), you will be spared.

PS. Hello to my Romanian visitor looking for "Nabucco the chore of the slaves". My current assignment could quite easily be designated as the chore of the (translating) slave....