📜 DECREE OF EXTRAORDINARY APPOINTMENT

Preserved in the Annals of the Attic

By order of the General Archive,

whereas the Attic has opened its doors to other languages;

whereas the characters have the unfortunate habit of speaking however they please;

whereas the protocols are practically impossible to translate without losing a little of one’s sanity;

and whereas Potoxof has proposed translating the whole thing with a 1973 pocket dictionary…

the following is hereby decreed:

Article I

Agnès is hereby appointed

📜 Extraordinary Official Translator of the Attic

on a permanent, honorary, slightly chaotic, and absolutely enthusiastic basis.

Article II

The Translator shall have the right to:

argue for hours over whether a joke works better in English or Spanish;

invent adaptations whenever a literal translation would be a monumental disaster;

protect the personalities of the inhabitants of the Attic from any assault by literalism.

Article III

It is expressly forbidden to:

translate Potoxof as if he were merely an “image editor”;

remove jokes because “people won’t understand them”;

turn Sister Potato into an excessively respectable nun.

Article IV

When an expression has no equivalent in another language…

…the Translator may replace it with another of an equally absurd nature, provided that it makes people smile.

Final Provision

Any linguistic disagreement shall be resolved by means of:

consulting the Annals;

the opinion of Gregorius;

a sigh from Aurelius;

and, as a last resort…

never, under any circumstances, by asking Potoxof.

Signed:

✒️ Aurelius, Chief Chronicler of the Attic.

✒️ Gregorius, Deputy Secretary and Keeper of the Seals That Still Work.

✒️ Sister Potato, who signed with a smear of honey.

✒️ Sister Pietat, who couldn’t stop laughing while signing.

This decree was drafted with the invaluable collaboration of Agnès, Extraordinary Official Translator of the Attic.

📖 Step

An ordered sequence of actions which, when observed with sufficient calm, eventually reveal the way forward, even when the signs have been put up incorrectly.

See also: Montsada, Patience and Potoxof.

📖 Volume

A seemingly harmless noun.

Its use is best avoided in certain conversations if Mr Amadeus Culerus is within fifty metres.

See also: Annals, Culerus and Memorable Nonsense.

📖 Whangdoodles

Plural noun.

An extraordinarily versatile term that crops up spontaneously in all manner of popular expressions throughout the Attic whenever prudence, good taste, or Mother Patience advise against using the original word.

Common expressions:

I’m up to my whangdoodles in this.
Don’t get on my whangdoodles.
I can’t be whangdoodled.
It’s doing my whangdoodles in.
Go and whangdoodle someone else.

Aurelius’s note: The etymology of whangdoodles remains a matter of debate among scholars. Some claim they have always existed; others maintain that they appeared spontaneously during an especially lengthy Council. There is no consensus.

📜 First International Symposium on Applied Whangdoology

After three days of presentations, four coffees and a considerable number of biscuits, the Scientific Committee concludes:

no one knows exactly what whangdoodles are;

everyone talks about them with complete naturalness;

any attempt to define them raises new questions;

Mother Patience recommends leaving the matter alone.

Official conclusion:

Whangdoodles exist just enough for everyone to understand them and just little enough for no one to be able to explain them.