Mike Lyle
Guest
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| Posted: Thu Nov 03, 2005 8:09 am
Post subject: Re: Retrofitting phrases |
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Steve Summit wrote:
| Quote: | Mike Lyle wrote:
ObTrivia: at the old Wembley Stadium they apparently used to cut
the
grass several times a _day_. So, to the eye of love and in good
conditions, the rate must be appreciable, not merely measurable.
Yes, but of course, the English take their lawns *seriously*.
There's an old joke (or perhaps it's a true story) about a
tourist visiting Eton and exulting over the impeccably lavish
lawns. Spying one of the gardeners, the tourist asks the
secret. "Why, that's easy," replies the gardener, "you just
brush off the dew every morning, mow them every other day,
and roll them once a week." "Is that all?" asks the tourist.
"Absolutely," confirms the gardener. "Do that for 500 years
and you'll have a nice lawn, too."
(I'd forgotten where I'd heard this, but a google search reveals
that it's from The Pragmatic Programmer, by Hunt and Thomas, and
I have lifted the above wording from Amazon's on-line excerpt of
that book's preface. ObAUE (not very): The Pragmatic Programmer
doesn't have much to do with English usage, either.)
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It's older than that. I don't remember where I read it, I'm afraid.
And there's also a Kipling quote along the lines of "...in a mere
four hundred years -- less time than it takes to make a perfect lawn
in a cathedral close..." which suggests the idea may have been around
before then.
--
Mike. |
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Richard Bollard
Guest
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| Posted: Tue Nov 08, 2005 5:17 am
Post subject: Re: Retrofitting phrases |
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On Wed, 02 Nov 2005 01:54:34 -0000, msb@vex.net (Mark Brader) wrote:
| Quote: | Richard Bollard and I (Mark Brader) wrote:
A similar thing seems to happen when they insert an amount of money
and always give the local conversion. This sometimes creates
absurdities of the form "Joe Blow was paid US$<small insignificant
sum> (A$<larger but still small and insignificant sum>)".
What's absurd about that? Seems to me like a normal thing to do.
It is absurd when the precise value is unimportant and all that is to
be conveyed is its bigness or littleness. Rather like "I wouldn't
touch him with a 30.5cm pole".
Sure, but that's a matter of how much precision to provide. With no
equivalent, how is the reader going to understand the relevant bigness
or littleness? "He was paid $500,000" sounds like a lot until you know
that the exchange rate with your own dollar is 272,293 to 1. You need
the "(about $2 Australian)" to make that clear. Of course, giving the
amount as $1.83626 would indeed be silly.
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I wasn't saying it was always absurd, I wrote that it _sometimes_
creates absurdities (and gave an example). In your example the
translation would be essential. In my example, ignoring the misplaced
decimal point, the idiom is "10 foot pole" and it would be absurd to
translate it.
| Quote: |
If you're suggesting that it's absurd for someone not to know the
approximate exchange rate with the US dollar, specifically, well,
then I just disagree.
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Of course I wasn't. My point was that translation should not be done
automatically by software (or whatever) but intelligently by someone
who can consider the context. An obvious point you'd think but usage
suggests that it is often being done uncritically, especially in
newspapers.
--
Richard Bollard
Canberra Australia
To email, I'm at AMT not spAMT. |
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