The New Dominion

The Olympics and all the related hooplah are now rapidly fading from memory into the history books, and the Islamic Holy Month of Ramadan comes to a close today. A quick browse through the archives from the beginning of the year until now will quickly show you that times have been quite interesting for those of us following Xinjiang. And although the close of these two major events by no means signals an impending lull in the action at the New Frontier, I wager that now, more than ever, is a good time to take a short break from the real heavy, serious business.

And so without furhter ado, I present to you the iconic, instant-meme well scene from the movie 300, with the immortal line, “THIS! IS! SPARTA!”… in Uyghur.

Hilarity ensues. Sadly, for some unfathomable reason, the Uyghur dubbers chose not to literally translate “This is Sparta!” into Uyghur – though if you want to go around Xinjiang kicking people into wells, OpkeHessip informs me the best translation would be “BU! DÉGEN! SPARTA!” Or replace Sparta with the name of the city you’re in to be more geographically relevant.

We see that after Leonidas draws his sword, at about 10 seconds, the emissary, in shock, responds “Sen sarang boldimu? Sarang bopsen!” or roughly, “Are you insane? You’ve gone mad!” Then, an awkward fifty seconds later, Leonidas responds to this accusation with,“Toghra. Men sarang boldum, men sarang boldum!” , or “That’s right. I have gone mad, I have gone mad!” where in the English version he delivers his memorable “Sparta” line. Not as unintentionally funny as the original, but that is more than made up for by the fact that IT’S IN UYGHUR! Woo.