Naval Forces - Focus on French technology: Tweets (10/X)

Tweets

1. #Naval Forces: http://bit.ly/2dYRXyK . Applying #mincaps & long dashes per #TransTechJournalism: http://bit.ly/1VEkBZE . #xl8 #t9n

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2. Steve Dyson ‏@DysonSdc  5h5 hours ago

   #Naval Forces_French #technology. Commande, €9. http://bit.ly/2dYRXyK  . #xl8 #t9n. #t9y. #Termino: #NavTechGloss (https://goo.gl/hyHhXj )

   

    

   

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3. Steve Dyson ‏@DysonSdc  6h6 hours ago

   #Naval Forces - Focus on French technology. Order form http://bit.ly/2dYRXyK . #xl8 #t9n. #t9y: #NavTechGloss (https://goo.gl/hyHhXj )

   

    

   

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4. Steve Dyson ‏@DysonSdc  6h6 hours ago

   #Naval Forces - French technology. Online order form, €9. http://bit.ly/2dYRXyK . #xl8 #t9n #TransTechJournalism: http://bit.ly/1VEkBZE 

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5. Steve Dyson ‏@DysonSdc  6h6 hours ago

   #Naval Forces - Focus on French technology. Online order form, €9. http://bit.ly/2dYRXyK . #xl8 #t9n Approach: https://101things4translators.com 

   

    

   

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6. Steve Dyson ‏@DysonSdc  6h6 hours ago

   #Naval Forces - Focus on French technology : Commande en ligne du magazine, €9. http://bit.ly/2dYRXyK  #traduction : @DysonSdc

   

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Out now: Naval forces, focus on French technology

Mer et Marine is now taking advance orders for the 2016 edition of
Naval forces, focus on French technology
This 100-page magazine, published in English by Mer et Marine, focusses on naval and air/sea defence and maritime safety and security.

The latest systems, equipment, technologies, vessels — from aircraft carriers to RHIBs and submarines — weapons, uncrewed vehicles, services and more. Includes descriptions of major innovations that will be presented by French companies at the Euronaval 2016 show in Paris. Advance orders now being taken. Magazine will be posted on 17 October, the day the Euronaval 2016 show opens.

Translation by Steve Dyson
Rereading: Ana Dyson and Allison Wright

> Order your copy of Mer et Marine’s 2016 magazine Naval forces, focus on French technology

Commande en ligne : Naval Forces - Focus on French technology

Mer et Marine édite la nouvelle édition de son magazine de 96 pages, en langue anglaise, dédié au savoir-faire français dans le secteur naval et aéronaval de défense ainsi que la sécurité maritime.

Nouvelles technologies, navires, (du porte-avions au RHIB, en passant par les sous-marins), équipements, drones, armement, services… Ce magazine détaille notamment la plupart des nouveautés que les industriels français vont dévoiler à l’occasion d’Euronaval 2016. Disponible dès aujourd’hui en prévente, il sera posté le jour de l’ouverture du salon, le 17 octobre.

> Commandez le magazine Mer et Marine Euronaval 2016 "Naval Forces"

Pour tout renseignement :
Mer et Marine - Service Abonnement
abonnement @ meretmarine.com
+33(0) 298 627 530

The power of word choices

In What We Are, also published in the Guardian on 5 October 2016, George Monbiot reviews Democracy for Realists, published earlier this year by the social science professors Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels. The authors argue that the “folk theory of democracy” — the idea that citizens make coherent and intelligible policy decisions, on which governments then act – bears no relationship to how it really works. Or could ever work. Hence Monbiot's kicker: Democracy cannot work as it is meant to; human nature does not allow it.

While Monbiot's review is fascinating but depressing, the point of my post today is to draw attention to the following passage:

We are suckers for language. When surveys asked Americans whether the federal government was spending too little on “assistance to the poor”, 65% of them agreed. But only 25% agreed that it was spending too little on “welfare”. In the approach to the 1991 Gulf War, nearly two thirds of Americans said they were willing to “use military force”. Fewer than 30% were willing to “go to war”.

I have seldom read anything on the power of language and word choices that makes the point so clearly and convincingly.

Capital offenders

On 4 October 2010, production editor of the Guardian until August 2016 and leading contributor to the Guardian's "much admired, occasionally followed" Style guide, published

Capital offenders: the case against uppercase, subtitled 

IT'S OFFICIAL: CAPITAL LETTERS CAN BE DANGEROUS.

As a long-time defender of the 'min-caps' faith, I was delighted to discover, even belatedly, this article and the following gems by such an acknowledged expert:

At least, that's what the US federal highway administration believes. According to the New York Post:

"Studies have shown that it is harder to read all-caps signs, and those extra milliseconds spent staring away from the road have been shown to increase the likelihood of accidents, particularly among older drivers."

It won't surprise regular Guardian readers that I agree with them. The Guardian style guide has long encouraged the gradual move away from capitals. So do other newspapers and websites, although some venerable style guides are still agonising over whether to lowercase internet and world wide web. (Be assured they will do so, perhaps in time for the 22nd century.) 

In part, the switch from capitals reflects a society that is less deferential than in the days when the Manchester Guardian would write something like this: "The CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER, Mr LLOYD GEORGE, presented the Naval Estimates to Ministers and Members of the House."

Most readers seem comfortable with a less formal style.

Capitals do have their uses, of course. As the Urban Dictionary puts it: "Capitalisation is the difference between 'I had to help my uncle Jack off a horse' and 'I had to help my uncle jack off a horse.'"

(Note carefully the three punctuation marks there at the end. I approve, indeed, Love it!)

****

Moving on now to another DAvid Marsh article, this one entitled
Capital letters out, swearwords in: one journalist's legacy, in which ‘The man responsible for the spelling mistakes in the Guardian’ looks back on a 42-year career that ends today. But first an delightful little aside:

You didn’t ask, but I’m going to tell you anyway: my favourite entry from this two-decade labour of love remains
meat loaf ... sings

meatloaf ... doesn’t sing.

Now, back on topic and to conclude:

If I have had any impact at all in my time at the Guardian, it’s a reduction in the incidence of capital letters.

OSASCOMP in the news #2

On 24 September, Johnson, The Economist's celebrated language columnist, wrote about OSASCOMP under the heading Hidden in plain sight, with the subheading Most people don’t know they know most of the grammar they know. He used the illustration below. (Note, however, that the graphic artist used a slightly different formula, OSSCOMP instead of OSASCOMP, because the illustration omits the second item in the longer list, namely 'age'.

Johnson made several good points, including:

Mr Forsyth may have exaggerated how fixed adjective order is, but his little nugget is broadly true, and it has delighted people to examine something they didn’t know they knew.

Clearly, then, the discipline of linguistics needs a marketing overhaul, because this is exactly what linguistics consists of: describing the rules, many of them hidden and not obvious, of the human language ability. Given how eagerly word-nerds recently shared this tit-bit about adjective order on social media, the lecture-halls for linguistics classes should be crammed to the rafters.

There are hidden rules not just in grammar, but at every level of language production.

This implicit grammatical knowledge overwhelms, in its intricacy and depth, the relatively few rules that people must be consciously taught at school. But since the implicit stuff is hidden in plain sight, it gets overlooked. It is cheering to see that things like the adjective-order rule can go viral on social media. Perhaps it can make people more likely to associate “grammar” not with drudgery, but with fascinating self-discovery.

OSASCOMP in the news

OSASCOMP: Applied analysis is by far the most popular post on this blog.
Today OSASCOMP made, if not the front page of the Guardian, at least Tim Dowling's Reference and languages Notebook under the heading Order force: the old grammar rule we all obey without realising followed by:

I had no idea there was a specific order for adjectives until I read a viral post.

The viral post focussed on the following quote:

from  a book called The Elements of Eloquence by Mark Forsyth.

Extracts

The paragraph concerned the order of adjectives – if you’re using more than one adjective before a noun, they are subject to a certain hierarchy. You know it’s proper to say “silly old fool” and wrong to say “old silly fool”, but you might never have thought about why – or if you did you probably imagined it was just some time-honoured convention you picked up by rote. But it isn’t. There’s a rule.

Unlike many laws of grammar or syntax, this one is virtually inviolable, even in informal speech. You simply can’t say My Greek Fat Big Wedding, or leather walking brown boots. 

In a piece for the BBC, ... Mark Forsyth examines a rare exception to the adjectival hierarchy: the Big Bad Wolf. Bad is opinion, and should therefore come first. However, as Forsyth points out, this phrase is too busy obeying another rule I’d never heard of: the rule of ablaut reduplication.

Other examples of the rule in action include chit-chat, singsong, flipflop and hip-hop. When you shift vowel sounds for effect this way, the vowels always follow a specific order: I, then A, then O.

If you’re a native speaker, the hierarchy is ingrained in you.

With moderation

Broadly I agree with everything both Dowling and Forsyth say and am very pleased to see that the topic is winning increased attention as it is often especially important to into-English translators and more particularly to those who translate technical journalism. I'm also pleased to have learned about the exception attributed to ablaut reduplication.

I would, however, like to make a couple of qualifying statements:

1. The statement "If you’re a native speaker, the hierarchy is ingrained in you" sometimes fails when the OSASCOMP categories are difficult to assign or the subject matter is beyond the writer's comfort zone (as occurs often when good into-English translators tackle subjects they don't fully understand). On other occasions, OSASCOMP-attentive readers will observe that even good writers do occasionally slip up for whatever reason.
2. For technical writers and translators, OSASCOMP is difficult to apply (a) because the categories are difficult or impossible to assign, or (b) because the challenge is to combine one or more adjectives with other types of qualifiers. This applies especially to noun qualifiers and things like prices or values combined with units of measurement as qualifiers.

Does '12-metre' before 'boat' or 'US$4-million' before 'ship' follow the rule as if it were a 'size' adjective?

I will follow this up with examples of (a) OSASCOMP slips by mother-tongue writers and journalists and (b) OSASCOMP challenges encountered in technical communication and the translation of technical journalism.

4 April 2017

Tweet:

Steven Pinker‏Verified account @sapinker  54m54 minutes ago54 minutes agoMoreOld language FAQ: Why Big black dog not Black big dog? New article, but answer goes back to 1950s "Vendler's Law."