The BBC’s new website for readers of an African dialect has sent the internet into a frenzy with its write-up of a viral dating nightmare story in which a woman tried to “troway di poo-poo”.
BBC News Pidgin, which launched two weeks ago, “brilliantly rendered a story about a woman who became trapped while trying to retrieve her own faeces during a first date from hell,” says The Sun.
The pidgin dialect is spoken predominantly in Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea.
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The first date from hell story was originally published on the BBC’s English language website earlier this week.
It told the story of a woman who was on a first date with Bristol student Liam Smyth when she realised that her excrement wouldn’t flush in his student flat.
After failing to get rid of the faeces, the woman panicked and threw it out of the window, where it became wedged between two houses. She then attempted to climb through the window to grab it.
With the help of Smyth, she tried to climb between the gap to pick it up but got stuck, meaning he had to call the fire service to set her free.
On the BBC's Pidgin website, the story says: “The woman wey dey learn gymnastics, just start to waka with Bristol student, Liam Smith, for di first time, when she take fear troway di poo-poo comot for window. Instead make di thing land for garden, di poo-poo come jam between two windows wey no dey open wide.”
In comparison, the English version says: ”The amateur gymnast was on a first date with Bristol student Liam Smith when she ‘panicked’ and threw the faeces out of the window. It did not land in the garden, but became wedged between two non-opening windows.”
“Journalists fluent in Pidgin and English have been hired by the public broadcasting service to write for the website and are based in Lagos, Nigeria,” says the Daily Mail.
It has been funded by a £289m investment by the Government to expand the BBC World Service into countries such as North Korea and is the first of 12 new language services as part of its biggest expansion since the 1940s.
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