Re: ideas and questions

Philippe Caquant scripsit:

> I would like to mention a chef-d'oeuvre of
> administrative style, you can read it in Paris metro :
> "Toute personne est tenue d'obtemperer aux injonctions
> des agents de la RATP tendant a faire observer les
> dispositions contenues dans le present reglement".
What exactly makes this sentence hard to understand?  Its counterparts
in English generally suffer from excessive Latin and Greek vocabulary,
the passive voice, and too many nouns with too few verbs (and the verbs
that are present generally have minimal semantics).  Here is a famous
example by George Orwell (the author of _1984_).  The left is the King
James Version (1601) of the Bible with modernized orthography; the right
is Orwell's "translation".

"I returned, and saw under the sun,     "Objective consideration of contemporary
that the race is not to the swift, nor  phenomena compel the conclusion that
the battle to the strong, neither yet   optimum or inadequate performance
bread to the wise, nor yet riches to    in the trend of competitive activities
men of understanding, nor yet favour    exhibits no tendency to be commensurate
to men of skill; but time and chance    with innate capacity, but that a
happeneth to them all."                 considerable element of the unpredictable
                                        must invariably be taken into account."
--
Here lies the Christian,                        John Cowan
        judge, and poet Peter,                  http://www.reutershealth.com
Who broke the laws of God                       http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
        and man and metre.                      jcowan@reutershealth.com

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