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Re: ideas and questions

From:<jcowan@...>
Date:Monday, March 8, 2004, 22:37
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

Replies

Philippe Caquant <herodote92@...>
Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>