[Mgs] Great MG Christmas Picture

[Eric Frenken]

David, you're close but Google was better on the first sentence.

The first sentence translates into "Hanseaten drive top down also in
winter". Your reference to Hanseaten is correct. Nowadays people living in
Hamburg, Bremen and some other northern German cities are sometimes referred
to "Hanseaten" colloquially. The Hanseatic League (Hanse: very old German
word for entourage or cohort) was founded in the mid of the 1200s and lasted
till 1669. It was a league founded for commercial reasons and to make
seafaring safer by defending merchants from buccaneers.

Happy Christmas

Eric
Heinsberg/Germany


> But I really like the Google translation:
> 
> Hansa drive also open in winter: Thomas Powl creates his
> very Tannenbaum purchased in the open convertible home.

Babelfish seems to do a little better:

"Hanseaten drive also in the winter openly: Thomas Powl
creates his straight bought fir tree in the open Cabriolet
home."

I guess my closest approximation would be:

"Trade also moves forward openly in winter. Thomas Powl 
ships home his newly purchased evergreen tree in an
open convertible."

"Hanseaten" refers to the members of the Hanseatic
League, which was a federation of ports and shipping
companies in the 1700s and 1800s (ergo "shipping"
the tree).  The whole caption is rather cleverly
worded in a way that doesn't make direct translation
possible.