at the turn of

One thing that has plagued me for nearly a decade and a half, for which I’ve never heard a satisfactory answer, is the Polish>English construction wherein two dates or times are given, in order to describe one date or time. I mean this:

1a) On the night of the 25^th and 26^th of September 2010, the traffic organisation was changed on the reconstructed ul. Grodzka.
2a) At the turn of the 16^th and 17^th centuries, Europe was hovering on the brink of war.

In English, it reads schizophrenically, as though the author couldn’t decide or didn’t know which time to put. At the same time, whilst the meaning is understandable the presentation causes an instant migraine, and the reader is pulled out of the flow of the text. This is the most concrete sign of a problem with any text, whether it’s a translation or a natively-written piece, it doesn’t matter. Anything that causes a reader to stop reading and start thinking about the technical construction of what they’ve just read, is not good.

Let’s go to the dictionary:

OED definition

turn, (noun) usage 2.2- a time when one period of time ends and another begins: the turn of the century

Read it a couple of times, and turn it over in your mind. At first glance it could be seen as a little ambiguous, but the key here is ‘when one period of time ends...’. That period equates to the actual date or time we want to specify. Therefore:

1b) ) On the night of the 25^th of September 2010, the traffic organisation was changed on the reconstructed ul. Grodzka.

2b) At the turn of the 16^th century, Europe was hovering on the brink of war.

As you can see, in the revised English versions, it’s the first date/time that is the actual date/time we want to specify.  ‘...and another begins’ is the second, redundant date/time.

Now, some of you might say, ‘Well, we don’t know if it was 11 pm on the 25^th or 1 am on the 26^th, so putting both covers all possibilities. To that I say, we don’t need to, because in English it is implied that we are talking about ‘some time just before or just after’, or in other words, ‘at the turn of’.

Note that the phrase ‘turn of the century’ has a specific set of rules, which are summarised nicely here on Wiki. Paragraph one of the article, on non-specificity, also describes what I’ve just said in the paragraph above. (p.s. - name the episode of Star Trek pictured above, and win a random book from my shelf!)