Damage - Damages

Sadly, this article has nothing to do with the excellent Louis Malle film of the same name.

Okay, so this is too interesting to not write a piece on. Also, the thing I’m correcting right now which yielded this little gem is so boring, and I’m so loaded on cold medicine, that I’m almost compelled to stop and do this. Plus, I haven’t posted anything of worth here since part one of the fabled articles series (which we will continue, of course, but I dare not touch the subject when my mind is so addled ;).

Right then, I’ll skip all the fancy-schmancy screenshotting and just copy-paste this little monster: 

The Ordinance specifies the criteria for determining whether an environmental damage occurred in a given case. 

So, first of all, a bad article! And why is anhere a bad article? Because environmental damage is uncountable. Specifically, damageis uncountable. The correction looks like this then: 

The Ordinance specifies the criteria for determining whether environmental damage occurred in a given case. 

But Jim! You’ve over-done the pharmaceuticals and have become confused! What about in the legal context, damages? That’s a plural damage, isn’t it?

Not so, my friends, not so. In the primary sense of damage meaning destruction and brokenness, it remains uncountable. This is a very common mistake I see in PL>EN translations, that someone has put, for example, The damages to the vehicle were extensive. Wrong! Bad, bad. Always damage, always damage. Remember this.

BUT! In the legal context, damages is of course valid. KFC has been ordered to pay 8 million dollars in damages after apparently brain-damaging a girl in Australia (true that, I just read it on the news).

The thing to remember is, damages is a distinct, separate word, unrelated to damagein any way, except for a fair resemblance in the spelling department.

Remember: damages (legal compensation) is NOT interchangeable with damage (broken stuff). Unless, like me, you’ve become hopelessly addicted to Strawberry flavour Neurofen for Kids and are considering suing the manufacturer for, err, not providing complementary fried chicken with every bottle. Yeah.

exploitation - utilisation

The problem here is a fairly common one – legitimate words that are mostly used correctly, but that have negative connotations which make them either easily misinterpreted or that make the sentence they sits in sound weird and inappropriate. This is most clear in (1) and (2). You can imagine some comic villain at UMP with a black top-hat, twirling a long black moustache around his finger as he writes it, cackling away insanely. In the Warsaw example, it sounds more like a confession than anything else. Have a look:

Common Usage
1)  Warsaw is one of the biggest beneficiaries when it comes to exploitation of European Union funds.
2)  Come and join us in Poznań, where our exploitation of national and European resources is reasonable and effective.
 3) Exploitation of local labour sources is recommended.

Better Usage
1)  Warsaw is one of the biggest beneficiaries when it comes to utilisation of European Union funds.
2)  Come and join us in Poznań, where we know how to reasonably and effectively exploit the resources of national and European institutions.
 3) Use of local labour sources is recommended.

OED Definition
1- (mass noun) the action or fact of treating someone unfairly in order to benefit from their work,
2- (v) making use of a situation to gain an unfair advantage for oneself    
3- (v) the action of making use of and benefiting from resources   

Fixit-shmixit
So, what are the fixes? Luckily, there’s a really, really cool synonym – utilisation (1). This has the same meaning and sense as definition 3 of exploitation, without any of the extra heavy baggage from definitions 1 and 2. The verb form, utilise, should also be noted.     

As it does, context has an effect on the gravity the exploitation in your document. (2) demonstrates how a tiny bit of judicious rephrasing allows us to keep our exploitation intact, but clearly give it the productive sense of definition three.  Makes it sound less of a crime, and more like they know what they’re doing.           

(3) is a nice, simple fix, and also a prime example of how we don’t always need to use our best, multi-syllabic bombs to blow up the chicken shed.