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*

The Week in Review - Julythe 3rd, 2011

Well well, not only did I totally black out on Wednesday and forget to do anything, but I wake up and find it's July already! Strangely, about thirty people I know all have birthdays in July, with most of them falling in the first two weeks. I always think of them as the Martial Law baby-boomers since they were all born early to mid eighties. So happy birthday all you July birthday people!

Speaking of the book of Face, we had quite an interesting and fun week over on The Bad Article's page there. On Monday, I stumbled bleary-eyed across a link to one of those fashionable 'Facebook Fail' type sites, with an amusingly pedantic slant which we can all enjoy. Haf a luk hear and C wot U fink.

Early Tuesday I tripped over an old friend, enables to. Check this out:

The availability of consumables in the form of solid wires and modern welding equipment enables to undertake tests of welding materials for operation at higher temperatures.

enables to is a broken phrase that can't be used without a personal pronoun. In the generic sense that we most often encounter it, enables one to would work best. If context or conscience won't allow you to do that though, then also consider allow(s) to/for followed by an infinitive verb with an 'of':
The availability of consumables in the form of solid wires and modern welding equipment enables one to undertake tests of welding materials for operation at higher temperatures.

The availability of consumables in the form of solid wires and modern welding equipment allows for undertaking of tests of welding materials for operation at higher temperatures.
Thanks to Adam Ł. for pointing out the medicinal flavour of infinitive+of, and also for some interesting points which I encourage you to read for yourselves.

Wednesday then saw enables to's best friend, allowed to, stick it's foot out and trip me with This also allowed to avoid the formation of unfavourable geometric structures on the surface. At the time I warned of a possible conspiracy, and asked you if you knew what it was. Niestety, no one replied, and I say niestety because now I'll be buggered if I can remember what my point was with that ambiguous question... I suspect it was something to do with some kind of verb usage without a personal pronoun being wrong and against nature etc.

Oh well, moving cautiously onwards around various potholes and broken stones, Wednesday afternoon broke the stunning revelation that one of punctuation's most divisive issues had just been resolved by Oxford in one swift, brutal move: the Oxford Comma is No More! (Lots of fun links on that page, check them out too).

Thursday brushed rudely by, sneaking an opportunistic hand into my coat pocket, and finding nothing (ha!) instead left a crumpled note there amongst the fluff:
In 1973, new machines were installed. In the next years, the company increased its production by 50%. Written in blood underneath was this correction:  In 1973, new machines were installed. In the following years, the company increased its production by 50%. I have to say I agree with this. It's a very common mistake - very common. Although my own explanation at the time was also wrong, the right way of thinking about it is that one can not say 'in the next (time word)' without an intervening quantifier. For example: In the next days, I will be leaving for Rome MUST be In the next few days, I will be leaving for Rome. (uwaga uwaga! In the next several days... is BAD. In the next few days ... is okay. Confusingly, For the next several days is okay though).

Finally, Thursday bowled me over on the corner, kicked me in the grapes and ran off at speed, but not before it shouted a horrible recurring also mistake at me, the gory details of which I leave for you to interpret here. Fortunately, Adam and Sabina were around to help me to my feet and dust me off. Take note of this also character, because I'm preparing an article on it which will come the week after next; next week we'll have our over-due Doty piece!

Until then,

Jim,
Ward 3,
City Hospital,
Dept. of Trips, Stumbles and Falls.