Re: New Relay Announcement

On Thu, Jan 23, 2003 at 04:21:59PM -0000, Bryan Maloney <slimehoo@...> wrote:
[snip]
> Likewise, send a smooth English translation to the moderator.  For
> the sake of this relay, having seen what other folks might
> call "smooth", I will take the time to define a SMOOTH English
> translation for the purpose of this relay.  Let us start with the
> following example:
>
> German:  Guten Morgen, mein Herr.  Wie Geht es Ihnen?  Haben sie
> dieser Morgen die Zeitung gelesen?
>
> SMOOTH Translation:
> Good morning, sir.  How are you doing?  Have you read the newspaper
> this morning?
>
> NON-SMOOTH, or really crappy, translation:
> Good morning, my mister.  How goes it with you?  Have you this
> morning the newspaper read?
>
> Even worse:
> Good morning, my lord.  How goes it you?  Have you this morning the
> timely-thing read?
[snip]

And, if my Ebisedian informant[*] is feeling particularly mean (or just
very out of touch with his English):

The from before happiness to male intimate person. Regarding male intimate
person. The before what? Is yes to the before from engraving read in past?

;-)

[*] The stubborn fellow used to insist that he only translate the relay
text into Ebisedian, and that I do the English translation myself. He also
insisted on writing in sanoki' (and the unreadable, layman's cursive
version of sanoki' at that) instead of Roman orthography. I had to go
through the pains of transcribing that into a more readable form. I've
since compelled him to learn the Roman alphabet and to write in Roman
orthography, and he has also learned passable English in the process.
Nevertheless, every once in a while when the _vyy'i_ emerge, ;-) he still
lapses into transliteration, rather than translation, mode, resulting in
what is basically gibberish written with English words.


T

--
Don't modify spaghetti code unless you can eat the consequences.

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