Welcome to the Year of the Whores (and other hee-haw moments)...

Yesterday, I noted how ST had -- in a picture caption -- transformed a terrorism expert into a terrorism export. And today, Tom alerted me to this equally pathetic BBC blunder, as reported in The Independent:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/weird-news/chinese-new-year-bbc-blunder-welcome-to-the-year-of-the-whores-9102117.html

The story went on to gleefully recount previous BBC subtitling gaffes, like:
* Referring to the Archbishop of Canterbury as the "Arch bitch of Canterbury; and
* During coverage of the Queen Mother's funeral, there was a call for a "moment's violence".

As for our own Channel News Asia (CNA), I distinctly heard the reporter saying -- at the time (November last year) -- that there were "areas ravished by Typhoon Haiyan" (the right choice of word should be ravaged).

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Here are some recent headline and advertisement specimens I have picked up, although they are not, strictly, blunders like the examples above:

This TODAY headline gives the impression that the couple were conjoined... until surgery was presumably invoked! ST's headline avoided this ambiguity:

This one below is ST's...

You would be forgiven for thinking ST was referring to a foreign, ie, non-Singaporean-run, group. But that's not the case! A simple hyphen and an apostrophe are all that are needed to fix the ambiguity: "A FOREIGN-workers' advocacy group...".

This ad, on the other hand, used a hyphen when it was not needed!...

 Still on hyphens, this ST headline below is absolutely correct. There is no gaffe. Without the hyphen, its meaning would have been changed (with the implication that the NKF was having issues with impatient counsellors!)...

To be grammatically correct (and to avoid the "old mother" ambiguity), this ad needs two hyphens..

... ie, 41-year-old mother...

But what is an S-line figure? I know that a well-endowed woman is said to have an hour-glass figure. But S-line?

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A Horse with No  Name

Finally, I heard this 1972 hit song (certified gold) by the group America on the radio this morning. Maybe we should call this lunar new year that has started on a gaffe-prone and hilarious note, The Year of A Horse With No Name:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpSdePGgVyQ