Language Liberalism Freethought Birds
Verbing Weirds Language only if you're expecting it to work in a simple way. This is a special case of the more general truth that Language Weirds.
Only when a republic's life is in danger should a man uphold his government when it is in the wrong. There is no other time.
The church says Earth is flat; but I have seen its shadow on the moon, and I have more confidence in a shadow than the church.
If we can't find Heaven, there are always bluejays.
I jsut started reading The Metropolitan Case and ran across this rather odd sentence:
An hour or so later, after being dropped in front of a storefront on 0vanadium Avenue, Anna stepped out of the taxi and admired the curving row houses and cobblestones of the block...After she was dropped off she stepped out of the taxi? What, the taxi got there in a truck?
Labels: humor
I used to teach Russian and Ukrainian, and some basic English, to civil servants. Now I teach Russian at a local continued-learning institute. I dabble in Gaelic and Welsh. I'm am amateur photographer and I love birding (in a small way). I'm a Progressive, and a Freethinker, and I know Evolution is a fact - that's FCD, Friend of Charles Darwin (look down the sidebar). I read a lot, and follow women's college basketball. Also I love astronomy, though I'm a rank amateur at it. Most of all, I like living in the reality-based community...
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3 Comments:
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At 10:37 PM, February 04, 2011
Kathie had this to say...
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At 10:02 AM, February 05, 2011
Barry Leiba had this to say...
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At 9:46 PM, February 06, 2011
The Ridger, FCD had this to say...
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<-- Older Post ^ Home Newer Post -->Hypothetical question, translator-to-translator, Ridger: If you were translating this excerpt, under what circumstances would you correct the error (or not)? Don't know if this makes me a bad person, but unless there was a compelling reason to the contrary, I WOULD correct it -- not only to protect myself from looking dumb and/or careless, but also to protect the original author.
It’s funny when we write what we’re thinking, and we know what we mean... and we can read it over five times and still think it's right.
Here’s a similar thing from BoingBoing this morning. Cory, who’s a good writer, is talking about Scientology:
«While I think you should be free to believe in anything you want, I also think it’s pretty shabby to try to bring people into your faith while deliberately disguising the tenets of the religion because you know that if you do, you can’t get them in the door.»
Because you know that if you do... what?
Hard for the writer to get it right; easy for the reader to see the error.
I would correct it, unless there was a reason not to. It's a slip of the mind, just a wrong conjunction. I'd certainly correct it if I were editing it, and it's hard to come up with a reason not to correct it in translation. It's not like a factual error.
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