Re: ideas and questions

Quoting jcowan@REUTERSHEALTH.COM:

> 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."
I'm forced to admit that I found the right easier to understand ...

                                                      Andreas

Reply