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Wed, 11 Apr 2007
population census and a silly satire.
I am in a satirical mood again so I will pick on the latest on the population census. Full text in Turkish is pasted below. The background.. The "new regime" (hah hah!) claims they conducted a scientific population census in north Cyprus. They have been announcing statistics about it in pieces. Ofcourse, the whole claim was shredded into pieces before even the census was conducted but that is a different story. Today, some data about "migration patterns" appeared in Yeniduzen following a press-release by the government planning and statistics department. The following snippets caught my satirical radar:
"Dense migration pr-1979: According to the data, migration to TRNC gets denser in 1979 and prior years. According to this data 46,795 people came to TRNC or migrated to TRNC prior to and including 1979."
Well, apparently there are very talented people out there because TRNC did not exist even in its absurd state in 1979. It was announced in 1983. These people succeeded coming to TRNC prior to its existence.
"The distribution of the migrants according to countries is as follows: Cyprus 32,285, Turkey 94,977, England 6,900, Bulgaria 1690 and smaller numbers from other countries."
I did the translation carefully. First of all which country is "Cyprus" from which people moved to TRNC (a non-existing entity)? Second, I suppose these people decided to split hairs and separated people from Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland etc and gathered statistics about England only? I highly doubt that. Later on they got smarter and defined a new country "South Cyprus" but still insisted on England. Oh well.
Interesting and sloppy language was also used; "the age group that is the most dense in terms of numbers". Nice terminology they got there. They are making sure that we do not think they are talking about molecular density or number density of individual people. It is some "number" and its "density".
They also mixed up "gender" and "species" for which word "cins" can be used but normally they are separated as "cinsiyet" and "cins". So the statement "Amongst TRNC citizens, the difference between species was very small but in total de-jure population it is a lot larger". Literal translation here for our amusement. Species? Donkeys vs Homo Sapiens? (*)
At the end of the day what counts is that:
"When we evaluate the residency of the de-jure population as whole, 114,553 lived in TRNC since birth, whereas those that migrated to TRNC amounted to 141,634".
The village that is visible does not need a guide! a literal translation from yours truly for your amusement.
(*) I am editing this post now. As was pointed out to me, if I am going to be nitpicking even for silly satirical purposes, I should be precise. Ok, "cins" can be used for gender but often "cinsiyet" is used instead. "Cins" can be defined as: "1. purebred. pedigree. pedigreed. pure-blooded. blooded. pureblooded. well-bred. kind. type. variety. species. genus. sex. gender. race. breed. cast. class. diversity. persuasion. quality. stripe. 2. sort. type. kind. breed. genus. species. sex. gender. race. stock. grade. crank. oddity. purebred. thoroughbred. queer. weird. screwy. " I just wanted to pick on it.
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