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.

The Week in Review - June the 26th, 2011

Another Sunday, another bout of zmiana pogoda; should we make the Jerzmanowice trip and investigate Chochołowy Dwór? Or not risk the threat of rain and instead stay local? Local won today, but a good time was had down on the bulwary by Wawel at this year's Jarmark. Jousting, real ale, medieval dancing and two small boys now equipped with wooden swords. What could be more perfect? Hey! Mind where you point that thing, ty maluch...

Better retreat into the safety of the week gone by then, where we find but two items of interest waiting for us. The first was our semi-surprise(d) look at the over-use of scope. The second, scraped off our Facebook wall and re-fried here in some nearly-new oil is something altogether crazier...

Promoting itself as "The mis-spelled Encyclopaedia", Wikipeetia is either a brilliant jape or some sort of self-recursive mental torture for anal retentives and proofreaders. It's the kind of thing that could keep you up all night, laughing at the deliberately mis-spelled articles as you frantically sharpen your knives and do IP look-ups to try and trace where the site owners live.

At any rate, that's enough from me for today. This coming Wednesday sees the return of our resident media darling, Dot! Happy times, indeed. Until then,

Pozd.

Jim :) 

The Week in Review - June the 19th, 2011

Sleepy greetings from a silently stormy Kraków - the sky lies dark and heavy, ponderous, rain-stuffed clouds ready to explode at any moment. Today was the Smallest Proofreader's chrzest (christening), and I've been juggling anglik family and Polish relatives with copious amounts of food and drink. Finally though, the dust has settled and I have five seconds to spare before I plug on with an all-night quest to complete a bevy of interesting articles on various things. Ask no more.

Nothing much actually happened this week, interesting-things-to-comment-on-here-wise, although Wednesday did see an old friend drop by for an unwelcome visit:

1a. Entries should be sent until September 12th 2012.
1b. Entries should be sent by September 12th 2012.

He's often around, begging for attention and making a nuisance of himself, so let's bolt the door on this bugger once and for all. Now, send is a versatile girl. You can send on, send up, send for, send away, send away for, send in, send off, send down and send by - but crucially, ye cannae send until, captain. So when you’re talking competition regulations, bidding rules, or any kind of job tender that requires envelopes full of boring papers to be delivered to a boring government office somewhere, then sent by  is exactly the funky action hipster chic you need. Send until is to be consigned to the waste bin – remember that!

Wednesday we also had the answers and discussion to last week's quiz; see here and here respectively for all that jazz. 

Thursday saw one of my own itches scratched by Adam from WaWa and Weronika down here in K-Town. A Spanish client had given me earache about not having an EU VAT number, something which had only occured once before in my whole history of proofreading. I had assumed that since I dealt primarily with Brits, Russians, Poles and Koreans, I wouldn't have to bother, but - well, it's a big old issue, and you get the skinny on it from our colleagues over on our Facebook page. 

Also on our Facebook wall, I said to you, "6,3 millions of people", and asked how many mistakes and what were they? Sabina from Nowy Targ nailed it down to 3, and for general edification I'm now going to reveal what those 3 mistakes are (so stop reading if you want to do it yourself...). Okay, the mistakes are:

1) Polish comma retained as decimal point (angliks prefer full-stops),
2) Improper plural use (millions) - million preceded by a figure becomes uncountable,
3) Bad Preposition - of wandered in and stopped for a casual smoke; ask the firing squad to put a bullet in his brain before he finishes...

Finally, Friday brought this to the table: "Changes expected in the next decades are aimed at improving the situation."
 
in the next decades ain't no good. The correct phrasing for this all too-common mistake is in coming decades. Any time you want to say in the next years/days/months/etc, don't do it. This is because (most of the time) you can't directly follow in the next with a plural noun. There are exceptions, but they are so very, very context-sensitive and specific that it's not worth muddying the waters of clarity with them. So repeat this to yourself:

I can not follow in the next with a plural time noun - no in the next decades.I can follow in the next with a plural time noun IF I put few (but NOT several).

Dlatego: 

BAD -  in the next decades        
BAD -  in the next several decades 
GOOD -  in the next few decades 
 
Wow, total improv and it doesn't look too too bad. Well, I'm going to stop there whilst I'm still making sense (yes I am, Aga ;). Dishes to wash and all that, and finally ten more pages of academia and a nice cold beer. Cheers!

Jim. :)     
 

The Week in Review - June the 12th, 2011

Hey-ho folks, how's it going? Having fun yet, or hurrying to finish some outstanding work? I've always like the ambiguity of that word - is the work late, or really, really brilliant? Hmm...

Speaking of brilliant, it's been a pretty fruitful week in terms of discussion-worthy things cropping up at work; in fact something just came up now, which reminded me that we had a meeting today! Let's look back at the action so far:

On Monday, a passing academic article had this to say: "The environment meets an important role in the development of obesity."

Two things are going wrong here. Firstly, meeting an important role is a non-functional mash-up of (possibly) two different phrases: 1) playing a role (or part), i.e. 'X plays an important role in Y'; and 2) meeting the needs of, i.e. 'The new bus service meets the needs of the community very well.' The second thing is the definite article at the start of the sentence - it changes environment as a *concept* into environment as a particular place, either previously specified or about to be in the next sentence.

 Reader Adam Ł. then chimed in with an interesting question about articles, definite and otherwise, which appeared in a book he'd read. ;) You can read all about it here, and feel free to add your own opinion on the matter too. :)

Tuesday brought this particular gem to my attention: "Since the 1st of July until the end of the year....". Long-time readers will remember our spectacular, action-packed 'Time Travel Week', where we covered the since/from issue nicely (though feel free to check out the rest of it too!).

The next exciting thing that happened was that I received a proposal. Sadly, not an indecent one,* but fun never the less:

1a. We proposed visitors to buy a t-shirt...
1b. We proposed that visitors buy a t-shirt...
1c. We propose to sell t-shirts to visitors...

Looking at the verb propose, example (1a) above is bad usage. (1b) and (1c) are correct alternatives. The reason for its subtle wickedness is in the verb-noun arrangement, "proposed visitors". We can not go directly from any form of propose straight to such a clause. This is a very, very common mistake by all speakers of English as a second language, not just translators etc.

Remember then, to always put a demonstrative (e.g. that) or some other buffering device, such as a handy preposition (e.g. to) between propose, proposing etc and whatever comes next!


Wednesday we had the long-awaited (by me anyway) Round Two of the Bad Quiz! There's still time to put the kettle on and settle down for a bit of head-scratching before next Wednesday, when we go over the answers and appoint our next winner.

 Thursday brought the full scope of amateur horror to my doorstep when this gibbering monstrosity swam up from the abyssal depths to assault my senses: "...one of the largest cellular networks in Poland, offering a full scope of telecommunications services."

Now, apart from the hugely naughty a which makes scope into a noun (such as one might attach to a rifle), scope is one of the sickest patients in the Over-Used wing of the Translating Issues Asylum. It's a small, simple thing, which nearly everyone uses, nearly all the time! 

So horrifying an issue is it, that I have immediately decided we need to do a whole slot on it. Until then, think about using a synonym instead - range and extent are always appropriately dressed and more than happy to help:  "...one of the largest cellular networks in Poland, offering a full range of telecommunications services."

Friday was a little less dramatic, providing small chuckles in the way of a small error on the part of mediafire.com, the super-handy file sharing site. I posted the following screen-grab and asked you to spot the mistake - no one has yet, so feel free to let rip here too!

 Well, that's enough of my tedious, ill-considered rambling. As I said, we've got the answers to this week's quiz coming up on Wednesday, the threat of a special article on the use of scope, and - don't say I'm not good to you - another guest article by the brilliant, talented, and brilliantly talented Dotty!

Do środa!  

Jim :) 

*awful film, great score. 






 

The Week in Review - 5th June, 2011

Welcome to the end of another week, or the start of a new one if you're one of those weirdos who considers Sundays the 'start' of the week. ;)
 
This was the first week of our new posting schedule - once on Wednesdays and the review on Sundays, as usual. However, the surprise element has been our FaceBook page, which has allowed me to quickly frame my thoughts and post any interesting issues as they've come up. It also allows you other FaceBook peeps to quickly reply to these brain burps. Apart from a few funny, translating-related pictures and so on, let’s look back at some of the highlights of the past week.
 On Monday the 30^th, we looked at how to collocate ‘professional’. A line from an advertising text for a catering firm that I was working on read: "Nice and professional service, competitive prices."
 
This is an odd collocation, nice + professional. It sounds sort of contradictory, and many people do indeed believe that being professional means not also being nice. So any time you want to do something with 'professional' that isn't ultra hardcore business/banking/legal etc, go for the common collocation of friendly + professional. np.
 
"Friendly, professional service, competitive prices." Note that you will always use a comma, not a joining article. Another common collocation for professional is fast.
 
On Tuesday the 31^st we looked at an ‘inspirational’ photograph (includes a rude word, uwaga) that highlighted a notorious film title translation: Bruce ‘the King’ Willis’s legendary Die Hard, translated appropriately enough as ‘Szklana Pułapka’ (Glass Trap) for the first film. But how do you cope with the fact that the ensuing sequels were based in airports, cities and the Internet? Is the title still appropriate, or was it itself a kind of pułapka? Hmm.
 
Wednesday the 1st of June saw us flirting with noun usage, based on this line: "Supervision over the committee reviewing the entities' applications is conducted by a secondary team of experts and judges."
 
Correct usage of the noun supervision here is with of, never over. Put simply, you’d never write supervision over, only supervision of. Similar words and phrasing, that might be responsible for the confusion here, include 'look over', 'check over' and 'oversight', e.g. “to have oversight of sth.”
 
Thursday the 2^nd left two interesting items on the doormat (however, I’m only going to give you one here; you’ll need to go and look at the other one yourself – note that you DO NOT NEED TO HAVE A FACEBOOK ACCOUNT TO JUST VIEW THE BAD ARTICLE PAGE!!!!!). The first of these is a very, very important thing to learn and remember – I should point out now that things that appear on the FaceBook page that then appear here are in NO WAY LESS IMPORTANT than those items that appear here on Wednesdays (sorry for all the caps, but this stuff is important you know ;)).
 
1a. "This causes that people ..."
1b. "This means that people ..."
 1c. "This causes people to ..."

 Verb use of cause is often used wrongly (1a), and the safer, better bet is to stick with (v) mean instead (1b). Depending on the rest of the sentence and how much work you want to do on it, you can rephrase and keep the cause (1c) – just remember the key part: writing causes that can lead to premature baldness in men and advanced short-sightedness in women!

 That’s all for now, friends. It looks like it’ll be another hot, sunny day here in Kraków, so I’m off to open a window (hundreds of pages to read by yesterday, fast!). Enjoy yourselves. :)

 Jim :)