Rolling Ball, Facing Book

Hello again! By now you might all be back in the swing of things after the festive period. Personally, I took things a little easy in-between Christmas and Sylwester – recovering from the former lead into preparations for the latter, and the time in-between seemed ideal for catching up on some R&R.

But of course it’s all over for now (he said, thinking of the three-day weekend that starts tomorrow here in Poland (R.I.P. Polish GDP)), and it’s time to set our sights on new goals and plans. I’m not one for new year’s resolutions, and long-term readers will know I’m great at promising exciting new articles and then totally failing to deliver them. So let’s just say that in 2012 I will be trying harder to stock the shelves here more often. 

To get the ball rolling, let’s catch up on some of the action that’s occurred on our Facebook wall since late October’s post on prepositions. First of all, there was quite a lot of follow-up to that item, and I’m going to roll it all into one proper article, Part II of the main thing. But plenty else of interest also occurred, including:

Word order
Bad: You can get here X about all the exciting things the city has to offer.
Good: You can get X here about all the exciting things the city has to offer.
Good: Here you can/will get/find X on all the exciting things the city has to offer. :-) 

Where X = advice, information, help etc. “here” could also be “at the (place)”, e.g. You can get/find advice on English grammar at the school/Bad Article etc.

Bottom line: get-noun-place

Pronoun agreement
In a Lingua Franca article by Geoffrey Pullum, the weighty role of opinion in the interpretation of grammar rules, particularly gender pronouns, is brought to somewhat humorous light. Bad Article reader Adam from Warsaw subsequently thought that, “... language reflects social norms, although it usually takes some time. That’s why ‘you’ began to be used in the singular, and the polite 2nd person in Polish is actually the 3rd. Such things must have been perceived as incorrect or weird, until they became the norm.”

Countable nouns
I often see plural noun ‘travels’ used where ‘trip’ or ‘journey’ should be. For example, ‘From the central train station, there are many travels you can make’, or ‘Travels on Bus 172 during this period will take approx. 20 minutes longer than normal.’

Let’s agree on this as a simple rule of thumb: Unless we’re using the idiomatic phrasing of, for example, ‘If you see a newspaper on your travels, please buy it for me’, always remember to use ‘trip/s’, ‘journey/ies’ or ‘travel times’ (particularly good for public transport notices). Ok?

Translating menus, food and dish names
A bigger topic than we covered over there, this is something we can pencil-in for a full discussion later on. I forget what now, but something in a menu translation made me explode with rage. Possibly a mushroom name or a fish name, both of which tend to get mangled quite ferociously on the way from Polish into English. :D

Phrasing
BAD: ...in the course of the last several decades...
GOOD: ...in the course of the last few decades...

‘last few’ is a self-contained unit; ‘few’ is not interchangeable with ‘several’ in this phrasing. There’s probably more to say on this subject, but this is the burning heart of it.

Wot I do
The Society for Editors and Proofreaders put up a good thing – it’s only half a page long, but it illustrates precisely and with greater clarity I can usually muster, what exactly it is that I do with our translations. Check it out here.

 So, that was most of it. There’s a sizable chunk of preposition debate too, which as I said, I will fillet and fatten, strengthen and flatten, rate and berate into another exciting instalment of... The Bad Article! *dramatic music, flash of lightning*

Such as, for example, pointless repetition...

 

Pointless repetition, or exciting new entries in fan-favourite franchises?

Pointless repetition: It's the enemy of sanity, good taste and common sense. Forget about grammar and linguistics and all the clever stuff we've crammed into our heads over the years - a lot of that stuff is damaging to the end-reader's health anyway, especially when applied directly to paper - pointless repetition goes beyond all of that into the realms of just, well, pointlessness...

Most often, it's an idea or a bit of phrasing that's repeated pointlessly within the same paragraph. Sometimes though, like today, the repetition takes the form of a kind of I-can't-decide-which-so-I'll-use-both mashup.

Think of today's villain like this: such as is equatable with i.e. and for example is equatable with e.g. So would you ever write i.e. e.g. together? No. So why put such as, for example, la la la? The problem is, that at first glance it might sound okay. You can rationalise it as 'examples within examples', or as adding an extra breath for the reader before entering a long list of la la las. But at the the end of the day, it's unnecessary repetition and therefore conflicts with the idea of good English, which always seeks to reduce in order to clarify. Yes, that's rather a sweeping statement, but I think you know what I mean.

So take a look at today's colourful, eye-straining picture below, and prepare prepare yourselves selves whilst I prepare prepare a larger piece about repetition in general genera for later this this week. Week.

(Click the link for a larger wersja (thanks Adam ;). Also - the theory behind 'Should I choose for example or such as in these situations might possibly also be explained using the idea above - think of them as e.g. and i.e. look at the context, and then take a shot).

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!)

in case of - in the case of

Idioms are fun, and powerful too. They’re the herbs and spices in the translator’s kitchen, and as anyone who likes to cook knows, judicious and appropriate use of a little seasoning in your food can elevate it from sublime to ridiculous. Errr, elevate it from good to great. That’s it.

 Today we have on our chopping boards two tasty, valid expressions that are being confused with each other. in case of is being used instead of in the case of. This is quite a common mistake and easy to make when you’re on a (cheese) roll. This is a classic example: Colonel Grzyborowska reported that the base was running short of ammunition, which would only last 4 days in case of the infantry, and 2 days in case of the artillery.

 So, definitions:
 in case of = in the event of something happening,
 in the case of = in the particular situation of,

 See how the article changes the meaning? 

 In case (of)
1a      In case of emergency, break glass with hammer and press alarm button.
2a      In case I’m late home tonight, dinner is in the oven. Just heat it up.
3a      Take your umbrella, just in case it rains.
4a      In case of a problem with the seating, there are 50 fold-up chairs in the room next door.

In the case of

1b      In the case of Collins Vs. Gabriel 1973, no distinct verdict was reached.
2b      Marek’s okay, he’s just quiet. In the case of Darek, however, I’d lock up the pills.
3b      In the case of financial discrimination against translators and proofreaders, a zero tolerance approach is called for.

Alternative phrasing for in the case of is to say in X’s case, e.g. In Darek’s case, I’d lock up the pills. Note too the useful in the event of, which is the nearly-twin brother of in case of, but which we can deploy when the scale of the situation becomes more epic. For example, In the event of a war, we expect our missiles to land first, or In the event of a zombie apocalypse, all our Shaun of the Dead fantasies will come true.

In any event (or at any rate), try to remember the distinction here – it seems like a subtle thing, but it makes a whole case-load of difference.