Good Omens subtitle translations: "They are toast: T-O-S-T...E!"

This post contains exactly one (1) line from Good Omens Season 2, which technically makes it a spoiler that should be tagged under the fandom's robust spoiler tagging policy.

 

At one point in the second season of Good Omens, the demon Shax, who is already established as a poor speller, says "They are TOAST! T-O-S-T-...E!"

Naturally, I started thinking about how you might translate that.

Fortunately, there are subtitles in 29 different languages, so I decided to write them down.

(I originally braindumped this on Twitter, but given that it's no longer reliable or googleable, I'm also putting it here.)

Additions, analysis, commentary, and transcriptions of the languages I can't do myself are more than welcome! 

Languages I know:

Canadian French: "fichus: F-I-S-H-U" 

France French: "cuits: C-U-I-S" 

German: "töte: T-Ö-H-T-E" 

Latin American Spanish: "fritos: F-R-I-T-O-S" (no error ) 

Spain Spanish: "muertos: M-U-R-T-O...S" 

Polish: "po nich: P-O N-I-C-H" (no error)

 

Languages I don't know:

Bahasa Melayu (Malay): "mati: M-A-T-E" (I think - I'm not certain about the morphology) 

Catalan: "Fregits: F-R-E-J-I-T-S" 

Dansk (Danish): "kaput: K-A-P-U-D"

Euskara (Basque)): "akabatu: A-Q-A-B-A-T-U" 

Filipino has her spell out "P-A-T-A...I", but I don't see that combination of letters in the preceding sentences. I don't know enough about the language to provide more info.

Indonesia: "celaka: C-E-L-A-G-A" 

Italian: "fritti: F-R-I-T-T..I: 

Magyar (Hungarian): "kampec: K-A-N-P-E-C...Z" 

Nederlands (Dutch): "klos: C-L-O-S" 

Norsk Bokmal (Norwegian): "ferdige: F-R-E-D-I-G...E"

Brazilian Portuguese: "fritos: F-R-I-T-O...Z" 

Portugal Portuguese: "ares: A-R-E-S...E" (the whole segment is "vão todos pelos ares" - I have a hunch "ares" might not contain all the meaning) 

Romanian: "praf: F-R-A-P"

Suomi (Finnish): "mennyttä: M-E-N-Y-T-A" 

Swedish: "döda: D-Ö-D-D-A" 

Turkish: "kizartirium: K-I-Z-A-T-T" (the letters I've transcribed as "i" are actually the dotless Turkish I, but I don't know how to type that)

Cestina (Czech): "napadrt: N-A-P-A-T-R-T" (There's a diacritic on the T that I don't know how to make) 

Greek is available, but I don't know how to transcribe or transliterate it. 

Russian (my transliteration): "kayuk: K-O-YU-G"

Ukrainian: the word is (my transliteration) "kinets" with a soft sign at the end, and she spells it out as (my transliteration "K-I-N-E-TS" without the soft sign at the end. 

There are also Hebrew and Arabic subtitles, but I can't read, transcribe or transliterate them.

Defining the intersection of walkable and accessible

I keep running up against the problem of not being able to find a good word for the overlap between "walkable" and "accessible". So I'm writing it down in a whole lot of words here, so I can point to it next time I'm trying to articulate the concept.

 

Why won't the word "walkable" do?

 

Some people interpret "walkable" as "accessible only to people who can walk, and therefore inaccessible to people in wheelchairs etc." That is never what I mean, so I clearly need a better word.

Why won't the word "accessible" do?

Some people interpret "accessible" in a way that doesn't necessarily include walkable. For example, they might say the grocery store is accessible if you can drive up, park in the disabled parking spaces right in front of the door, and roll your wheelchair in the door unimpeded - even if the only way to get to the store is by driving on a highway that has no sidewalks.

What concepts does this word need to encompass?

 

- Proximity: Things need to be close enough that walking/wheeling/otherwise going without a vehicle is easy. Your destination is close enough to your point of origin that you don't need a vehicle. (Q: Close enough for whom? A: The end users, whoever they might be.)

- Safety: You aren't going to get hit by a car. You aren't going to slip and fall on the ice. You aren't going to get harassed by creeps on the street.

- Lack of obstacles: There are no cobblestones that would make it difficult to use a wheelchair. You don't have to go out of your way to find a crosswalk. There is a clear, suitable path to wherever you are going.

- The "no-brainer" factor: I walk to the grocery store because it's across the street - using any sort of vehicle (even a bike) would be ridiculous. If you're going to multiple stores in an indoor mall, you aren't going to go outside and get into your car and drive your car to the next store. If you're going to multiple destinations on the same city block, you aren't going to drive between them - even if you drove to the city block, you're going to park your car once and head to all your destinations on foot or in a wheelchair or otherwise without a vehicle.

Anyone know a word that does all this and is clear and common enough for me to use in translations?

The generic "you" is a useful tool for writing inclusively

With reproductive health in the news lately, I'm seeing a lot of people diligently endeavouring to make their statements about bodies and anatomy as inclusive as possible, including inclusive of trans and non-binary people. This leads to phrases like "birthing parent" and "uterus-havers", which sound awkward, and can make the cause of inclusive language seem less credible to people who aren't already on side.

 

This makes me think of the 90s, when adults around me would often express contempt for inclusive language by performatively making it conspicuously unwieldy. "Firemen? No, wait, that isn't politically correct...firewomen? Firepeople??" Making a big noisy fuss of how inclusive language is OMG SO HARD while completely disregarding the perfectly cromulent word "firefighters". 

I think the attempts to use inclusive language for reproductive health might sometimes come across this way. 

 

In the specific case of recent inclusive reproductive health discourse, I can tell that the speakers' intentions are benign and they genuinely want to be inclusive. Sometimes they're deliberately aiming for conspicuousness, but sometimes they can't think of a less awkward way to phrase it, and the awkwardness might distract from or detract from their important point.

 

In these situations, where you want to be inclusive but can't think of a simple way to do so, a useful tool can be the generic "you".

 

Example:

Original: "Masks are mandatory in our birth centre. Mothers can remove their masks while in labour."

Attempt to make it inclusive: "Masks are mandatory in our birth centre. Birthing parents can remove their masks while in labour."

With the generic "you": "Mask are mandatory in our birth centre. You can remove your mask while you are in labour."

This is clear. It's inconspicuous. And it's inclusive - by which I mean not just that it includes anyone who might be in labour and while not being a woman or a mother, but also it specifically includes the reader (and, thereby, includes everyone). 

 

One objection to gender-inclusive language that I hear, most often from cis women, is that they feel that excluded when women are not specifically mentioned. Using the generic "you" helps mitigate this by addressing the reader directly. How could you feel excluded if I'm talking directly to you?

 

Of course, there are cases where the right communication strategy is to be conspicuously inclusive, even if the phrasing is awkward. Sometimes the situation does in fact call for a big showy show of the fact that not everyone who gives birth is a woman.

And sometimes the right communication strategy is to be inconspicuously inclusive, to make it no big deal that someone who is not a woman might be giving birth. The generic "you" can help you do that.

Magic words: "and also"

We live in a complex and imperfect world. This sometimes results in having complex and imperfect thoughts, feelings and opinions that aren't absolutely consistent with each other, and sometimes means we have to make imperfect decisions.

But when we talk about these things, it can sometimes come out sounding like we're justifying or excusing our imperfections, when in fact what we're trying to do is simply state that they exist.

In these situations, a useful little phrase is "and also". 

Compare:

 

1. "Amazon's labour conditions are appalling, but they're the only place I can find that sells this very specific item I need."

2. "Amazon's labour conditions are appalling, and also they're the only place I can find that sells this very specific item I need."

 

Example 1 could come across as defending or justifying or excusing their labour conditions, whereas Example 2 doesn't really do that. It more acknowledges the tension of the situation, without presuming to give a definitive resolution.

More examples:

- "That big strange dog that ran up and jumped on me was really poorly trained, and also that was the best thing that happened to me all week!"

- "Monty Python's Argument Clinic sketch is a work of genius, and also Monty Python's Chinese Embassy sketch is appallingly racist."

- "I'm glad they're keeping safe by taking more precautions than are required by government policy, and also I'm disappointed that I won't get to meet the baby any time soon."

 

Both things can be true. We contain multitudes. We don't have to decide. We can acknowledge it and sit with it. 

"And also" helps us do that.

Magic Words: "or . . . ?"

A thing that exists in the world: well-intentioned people who have innocent questions that they want to ask for a good reason.

 

Another thing that exists in the world: assholes who are cruel and malicious under the guise of asking innocent questions for a good reason.

If you're a well-intentioned person who has a good reason for asking an innocent question of the sort that cruel, malicious assholes might weaponize, you can often disarm your question with one simple conjunction: "or".

Scenario:

Cousin Dorothy has just announced her engagement! Congratulations, Dorothy!

Traditionally, you've been invited to your cousins' weddings, but you know that event planning isn't exactly Dorothy's thing, so she might have a smaller wedding that doesn't go as far as inviting the cousins. (After all, if you invite one cousin you have to invite them all, and there are just so many cousins!)

 

You happen to own a wedding-appropriate dress, but it has long sleeves. You'd get overheated if you wore it in the summer. 

 

So you want to find out when Dorothy's wedding is going to be, without being seen to presume that you'll be invited.

 

Normally, this could be achieved with a simple small-talk question: "So have you set a date yet?"

 

The problem is your family also includes Auntie Em. Auntie Em is very vocally judgmental about many things, and one of the things she's vocally judgmental about is "you're only engaged if you have a wedding date set."

So if you were to ask "Have you set a date yet?" you could come across as being judgmental like Auntie Em, as though you're setting up to gotcha Dorothy for not having a date set yet.

You can avoid giving this impression with one simple word: "or . . . ?"

Instead of simply asking the question that might come across as judgmental, add at least one alternative, and deliver them verbally with a rising and trailing "or".

"So have you set a date yet? Or are you just enjoying being engaged? Or . . . ?"

 

Presenting a perfectly reasonable alternative that is no less positive creates the impression that you think it's perfectly valid not to have set a date. You're making it clearer that you're not being judgmental like Auntie Em.

The function of the final "Or . . . ?" is, explicitly, to avoid setting up a false binary (assholes like Auntie Em often set up false binaries as gotchas) and, implicitly, to make it clearer that you understand there are a wide range of situations in life and you're open to whatever they might say here in response.

The final "Or . . . ?" also help with tone. Sometimes, the tone and delivery of "A or B?" can come out as judgey. (Imagine the tone that would be used for "Want a cup of tea? Or do you think you're too good for tea?") Ending with a rising and trailing "Or . . . ?" reduces the risk of producing this tone.

Some other examples:

Compare asking your host "Do you want me to make the bed?" vs. "Do you want me to make the bed? Or strip the bed? Or . . . ?" With the second option, you're acknowledging that different options are convenient for different people and you're absolutely open to doing whatever is most convenient.

Compare asking your boss "What do you want me to do if Important Client comes in while you're in the meeting?" vs. "If Important Client comes in while you're in the meeting, do you want me to come get you? Or take care of them myself? Or . . . ?" You recognize that there are nuances, you've taken the initiative of thinking of a couple of ideas yourself rather than making your boss come up with solutions, you're showing that you're open and amenable to doing whatever your boss thinks best.

At this point, some people might be thinking "Instead of all this strategic conjunction use, why not just be direct and ask Dorothy whether you'll need a summer dress for her wedding?"

And sometimes you can do that! In which case, you don't need me! Go forth and say whatever you want!

But sometimes that causes interpersonal problems. And, in these cases, you can often smooth things over with the judicious application of one simple word: "or . . . ?"

Magic Words: "human being"

I've discovered a neat trick: you can intensify any sentence by replacing "person" (and similar synonyms) with "human being".

 

Compare: "I haven't hugged another person since before the pandemic" vs. "I haven't hugged another human being since before the pandemic."

The second one sounds a lot more dire, doesn't it?

Compare: "You used straight apostrophes in last month's newsletter and smart apostrophes in this month's newsletter. But no one else is going to notice." vs. "You used straight apostrophes in last month's newsletter and smart apostrophes in this month's newsletter. But no other human being is going to notice."

 

The likelihood of being noticed sounds a lot lower in the second one, doesn't it? (Even though, if you're really pedantic about it, "no other human being" is narrower in scope - "no one" could plausibly include dogs and aliens and AI.)

 

I love things like this, where minor changes in wording have clearly discernable changes in connotation, even though no one can explain why no human being can explain why!

Navigating conversations with family language barriers

From a recent Social Qs:

When we visit my mother, she speaks to me in Hungarian, her native language, in front of my husband who doesn’t understand a word of it. He told me he feels excluded by this because he can’t participate in our conversations. I’ve told my mother her behavior is rude, but she persists, saying, “I am Hungarian, and this is my house.” She is fluent in English, so she could honor our request if she wanted to. Also, she and I speak on the phone frequently. If she had something private to say to me, she could do it then. Otherwise, she’s nice to my husband. Any advice?

My recommendation, as someone born into a family with internal language barriers, is to translate everything your mother says into English for your husband's benefit. You can do this on a turn-by-turn basis, or summarize every few turns. (It will become clear and intuitive to you which approach is best.) This is hard work and quite inconvenient, but that very inconvenience adds a lot of clarity to the situation.

If your mother is speaking Hungarian out of pure stubbornness and can in fact manage just as well in English, the delay of waiting for everything to be translated will incentivize her to speak English whenever she can manage it. If she does in fact struggle to express herself adequately in English, she should find it a relief to have someone else doing the work. 

Another thing you might discover is that not everything is relevant to your husband. In the process of translating everything, you might both eventually find that there are some branches of the conversation that he just doesn't care about. This is good, useful information! It means that once you've established to everyone's satisfaction the proportion of the conversation that's irrelevant to your husband and the typical contents thereof, your husband may be comfortable with leaving the irrelevant portions untranslated.

When your husband does have something to contribute to the conversation, he should feel free to contribute in English, even if that portion of the conversation was in Hungarian. As you know, understanding another language is easier than speaking it, so, counterintuitive as it may seem to unilingual people, the conversation can still work perfectly well with him speaking English. And if your mother has some trouble understanding your husband's English statements, you can translate them for her just like you translate her Hungarian statements for him.

The advice columnist also suggests, as a last resort, that LW simply not bring the husband to visit the mother. I have no objection to that idea either, and don't think it needs to be a last resort, although I can't tell through the internet whether there's a good reason why LW is bringing the husband or whether this is one of those circumstances where married couples mindlessly do things as a couple even though there's no reason to bring both of them. But, in any case, translating the conversation is one of those things that will help if your mother's intentions are good while inconveniencing her if her intentions are bad.

[X] or [X+1] [noun]s

A turn of phrase I've noticed recently, although it seems old-fashioned (or possibly British) is "[X] or [X+1] [noun]s".

Examples:
- "An army of 300 or 400 soldiers."
- "I drove there with 2 or 3 friends."
- "The house had 13 or 14 windows."

This turn of phrase is interesting to me, because I think it has connotations and I can't tell what they are.  I suspect it's not (or perhaps not always) literal - like how "a dozen eggs" means literally 12 eggs, but "a dozen people in line" can mean 10 or 14.

Does "300 or 400 soldiers" mean between 300 and 400?  Or might it be 298 or 407?  Or might it be between 300 and 500? (i.e. "three hundred and something or four hundred and something")?  The speaker knows, I can't tell.

The "2 or 3 friends" phase is a real-life example, i.e. someone actually said that. (Unfortunately, I didn't save the source.)  That's a situation where they'd actually know the real number - surely when it's only 2 or 3 people, you can remember who exactly was there.  So why did they phrase it that way?

This sounds like a strange thing to worry about - even if I don't know what the speaker's thinking, it's clear enough for our purposes - but this kind of thing is sometimes relevant in translation, when the target language doesn't do the same thing with numbers or doesn't have the same connotations.

For example, in French they have the word dizaine, deriving from dix, meaning 10. As I mentioned above, in English we have "dozen", which means either "12" or "approximately 12" depending on the context. (French also has douzaine, meaning "dozen".) Dizaine does the same thing with 10 as "dozen" does with 12 - it either means "10" or "approximately 10", depending on context.

But because English doesn't have a word for dizaine, the French to English translator needs to figure out from context where this particular instance of dizaine means "10" or "approximately 10", and whether the approximateness needs to be explicitly stated in the translation. (For example, if I say "Cassandra can cook Thanksgiving dinner for 10 all by herself!" and there were really 11 people at dinner, no harm is done by my saying 10. If I say "Cassandra invited her 10 nieces and nephews to Thanksgiving dinner" and Cassandra actually has 11 nieces and nephews, someone might read that and wonder whom Cassandra has disowned.)

This doesn't seem like it would be relevant to translating "[x] or [x+1]" - all languages have words for numbers and for the concept of "or". (And if there are any that don't, please let me know in the comments!) You can just plug the words for the numbers and for "or" into the sentence, and the translation is complete, right?

Not necessarily.

It's possible that a number phrase that's perfectly cromulent in one language might sound unduly weird in another, and the translator might have to adjust.

An example I routinely encounter in technical and administrative documents written in French is an approximating adjective followed by a non-round number, for example environ 473 voitures ("around 473 cars").

It is a simple matter to translate the words, but it sounds conspicuously weird to the English reader in a way that it doesn't to the French reader, so the English translator has to figure out the connotations (do they mean literally 473 or approximately? If they mean approximately, how did they land on that number rather than 470 or 475?) and the implications (what would be the consequences if you said "473" without any modifier and it turned out to be approximate? Or vice versa?) and adjust their translation accordingly, or find a workaround. (I like "some" as a workaround here - "some 473 cars". It conveys the notion of approximateness, but is also more easily overlooked by the English reader).

There might be some languages where "300 or 400 soldiers" also sounds conspicuously weird in a way it doesn't to the English reader, so a translator working away from English might need to understand the connotations so they can eliminate the conspicuous weirdness without eliminating accuracy.

And that translator may well ask me, in my capacity as a native-speaker Anglophone, exactly what the connotations are.

And I haven't a clue! Isn't that weird?

Things They Should Invent: "you guys" gender map

Some people perceive "you guys" as masculine, even in the vocative case.

Others, such as myself, perceive it as having no element of gender.  "You guys" is a casual, inclusive vocative plural, completely unrelated to the masculine nominative singular "guy".

But I'm not here to convince you that I'm right.

I'm here to convince someone to map it.

One of the great moments of internet sociolinguistics is the Pop vs. Soda map, which shows the geographical patterns of American soft drink nomenclature.

Someone should do the same for whether "you guys" is masculine or gender-inclusive!

Based on the way people on the internet talk about the "you guys" question, I strongly suspect there's some geographical element to how it's received.  A crowdsourced mapping project, like Pop vs. Soda, could answer this question.

The technology exists, as evidenced by Pop vs. Soda. The answer would be informative, and help people better tailor their communication to various audiences. Surely there must be someone out there looking for a linguistics research project idea!

Sentences

The following is a quote from Hyper Focus: How to be More Productive in a World of Distraction by Chris Bailey. As usual, any typos are my own.

As you read, your brain is hard at work converting the raw bits of perceptual information into facts, stories and lessons that you remember and internalize. After your eyes register the waves of light emanating from the page, your mind generates words from them. These words temporarily fill your attentional space. You then begin connecting the words to form syntactic units and clauses - the fundamental building blocks of sentences. Finally, using your attentional space as a scratch pad, your brain groups those combinations of words together into complete idea so you can extract their higher-level meaning.

Sentence structure can influence this process and slow down or speed up how quickly you read. Much as the world doesn't combine many groups of data in to sets greater than seven, every book is structured to accommodate a reader's restricted attentional space. Sentences have a limited length and are punctuated by commas, semicolons, and dashes. According ton one study, the period at the end of a sentence is the point when our attentional space "stops being loaded, and what has been present in it up to that moment, must be in some way stored in a summarized form in a short-term memory."

This is super interesting to me, because reading isn't natural! It's an entirely artificial construct that, for the vast majority of people who are literate today, has only been available to our ancestors for a few generations - not nearly long enough for our brains to evolve to accommodate it. (For example, compulsory public education was introduced recently enough in the various places where my ancestors lived that I have personally met the first people in each branch of the family to have access to it. Some were my great-grandparents and some were my grandparents. One of them is still living.)

I always thought of learning to read as simply sounding out words until you can do it automatically, but upon reading this I realize it involves so many more mental processes than I originally thought, not all of which are natural, but all of which the majority of the population can learn to do automatically with just a few years of instruction and practice!

And this also extrapolates to spoken language (although spoken language isn't nearly as recent and our brains have had more time to evolve accordingly). Our brains learn to pick up not just the meaning of words and how syntax works, but the very concept of a sentence - picking up cues that mean "This thought is done, save to memory", and, conversely, conveying those cues.

Language surely did not emerge with a fully-formed grammar, so human brains had to figure out both how to indicate "This thought is done, save to memory" and to process that concept.

I wonder if, in the very early days of human language, processing these concepts was difficult, like how reading is hard work when you're a little kid? I wonder if elders were thinking "Kids Today! Why can't they just point and grunt?"

I wonder if there are, or ever have been, any languages that don't have the concept of a sentence?

Technobabble

When watching both Star Trek: Discovery and The Orville, I've had moments when I find the technobabble unconvincing.  My visceral reaction is sometimes "No, that will never work!" or even "WTF? It doesn't work that way!"

Which is ridiculous, because it's technobabble - it doesn't reflect any aspect of reality, and if the writers say it works that way, it's works that way. (And every technobabble I've questioned did end up working on screen.)

Nevertheless, I find myself convinced that it doesn't work that way, even though I don't actually know how it works.

I wonder if this might be due to translator brain. Some of my work involves translating things that I don't fully understand - sometimes the author and the audience know exactly what they're talking about and I don't, other times I'm learning the technical terminology and how the processes work as I go. Even when I don't fully understand the text, I still need to understand its internal logic. Should this be a "however" or a "moreover"? (Sometimes the source language vocabulary is ambiguous and I need to look at the actual logical structure.) Does this sentence support the thesis of the text, or is it a counter-argument to be refuted?

It's been over a decade since I watched new-to-me Star Trek (and for the purpose of analyzing my response to technobabble, The Orville can be grouped in with Star Trek), so it's quite possible my translator brain has developed significantly since then. Of course, it's also possible that my understanding of science and technology have developed significantly, so I'm more sensitive to meaningless technobabble.

And it's also possible that Television Writers Today are simply not as good at technobabble as the Star Trek writers of my youth.

I've just started watching DS9 (which I wasn't able to watch when it first came out), so we'll see how I handle their technobabble.

More benefits of using mitigative language when editing

Seen on Twitter: this thread about using mitigative language rather than assertive language in the editing process:

Mitigative language in editing



In addition to the excellent points here about face, a few things occurred to me specifically about the nature of editing/revision in translation. (They may also apply to unilingual editing, but my experience in that area is far more limited.)

1. Some edits are objective and some edits are subjective

"This word is spelled wrong" is objective. "The alliteration in this sentence sounds silly" is subjective. By using mitigative language for subjective edits, you're making it clear that your objective edits are objectively necessary - and thereby increasing their credibility. If you're too aggressive about your subjective edits, you come across as someone who makes mostly arbitrary changes.

2. Sometimes the editor-as-reader's thoughts and feelings are what's relevant

In translation school, they taught us that if one reader gets a certain impression from a text, others will as well.  This also applies to the editor as they are reading the text. If the editor says something like "I initially thought the word "drink" was a noun, not a verb, and got very confused," or "I felt like the author was speaking to me condescendingly here," what is relevant is that the editor-as-reader had that reaction. What caused that reaction? Can we - and should we - eliminate the cause of that reaction? Which brings us to...

3. We don't want to get caught up in debating the objective truth at the expense of subjective improvements

I can best illustrate this with a story about user-testing a website design.

My task was to find a specific widget and put it in the cart as though I was going to buy it.  I first skimmed the website for something to click on that said "Widgets", but didn't find anything.  Ultimately, it took me four tries to find the right route.

During the fourth try, I scrolled down further than previously to see the bottom of the sidebar menu, and discovered that there was in fact a button that said "Widgets". However, there was a banner-like design element above that set of buttons that led me to think there wouldn't be any more relevant information below.

So my feedback was: "I was looking for something to click on that said "Widgets", and didn't see anything.  I didn't scroll down as far as the rectangular buttons because I got the impression that the banner above them was a placeholder and I didn't think there'd be any buttons below it. To fix this, I would suggest deleting the banner entirely. If that's not possible, perhaps consider moving it it below the buttons so the presence of the buttons is readily apparent."

Quite mitigative, not at all assertive, and effective feedback. The banner was promptly removed in response.

But imagine if I'd been assertive and non-mitigative, as though my perception were the objective truth.

Me: "There isn't anything that says Widgets."
Website designer: "Yes there is. See?"

I'd be wrong - there was a Widgets button. And because I'm outright wrong, the website designer's gut instinct would be to prove that I'm wrong and disregard my feedback on the grounds that I clearly don't know what I'm talking about.

Similarly, in the example given in #2 above, if, instead of "I felt like the author was speaking to me condescendingly here," you assertively say "This is too condescending," the author's visceral reaction could be "No, it's not condescending at all."  And then you're caught up in arguing over whether it's condescending, rather than determining (and, if necessary, fixing) what gave you that impression.


Your goal in editing and/or revising is not to win, but to make the text as good as possible. Conveying the nuances of your response to the text helps achieve that goal. Trying to be assertive takes the focus away from that goal.

The first homophones

Homophones are words that sound the same but have different meanings.

If you think about it, it's really weird that homophones became a thing in the first place!

Yes, I know, homophones tend to enter the language from different origins.  For example, "sight" comes from Old English, and "site" comes from Latin.

But someone at some point in human history was the first person to attempt to use a homophone, and at some point (may or may not have been the first attempt) the notion stuck.

It's so weird to me that the notion stuck!  If you imagine a world where there's no such thing as a homophone, it seems like homophones would be a dealbreaker - think of the confusion if words suddenly started meaning multiple unrelated things depending on context, in a universe where words have only ever had one meaning!

But for some reason it stuck. No one said "Dude, you can't call it a "site" - that sounds exactly like "sight" and everyone will get confused! We already have perfectly good words like "place" or "location". Use one of those."   (Or they did say this and went unheeded.)  And then, as time passed, even more homophones got added. (Including, in this specific example, the word "cite".)

If it hadn't already happened, no one would ever believe that something like that could happen.

"It doesn't matter as long as people can understand you"

There are people who say that it shouldn't matter whether something is written properly as long as the audience understands it.

I've heard this said about things that aren't "correct" English per the prescriptivist definition (like "ain't"), and about spelling and grammar errors, as well as things like slang and txtspeak, which aren't the focus of today's post.

I have also found myself in situations where these things make it difficult for me to understand the text. For example, if the "incorrect" English or spelling or grammar error shifts meaning, I interpret the text literally, not realizing that the person meant something else.

And sometimes in these situations where I'm having trouble understanding because I interpreted an erroneous text literally, I'm accused of being pedantic, as though I'm not understanding on purpose as a judgement of their poor writing skills, with tone and delivery hinting that I should stop being difficult and just get along and understand it like a regular person.

This makes me wonder: do people whose English skills lead to spelling/grammar/usage errors that shift meaning find it easier to understand other people with similar English skills?  Do they not see the shift in meaning, or somehow instantly see what was intended?

(In this post so far, I'm talking about people whose first language is English, although it could certainly also happen with people whose first language is not English.)

One thing I've learned in my translation career is that Anglophones and Francophones make different kinds of mistakes in French.  An Anglophone who learned French in school wouldn't confuse manger (to eat) and mangé (eaten), or ses (his/her where the noun is plural) and ces (these) on the grounds that they're completely different parts of speech, but these are among the most common mistakes Francophones make on the grounds that they're homophones.  (I was so proud of myself the day I almost sent out an email in French with an infinitive where a past participle should have been! Finally thinking in French!) 

Meanwhile, a Francophone would never say il faut que je vais (indicative , where the subjunctive il faut que j'aille is correct), but this is one of the most common mistakes Anglophones make because subjunctive isn't as intuitive for us.

A French text written by an Anglophone with poor French skills is very easy for me to understand. A French text written by a Francophone with poor French skills is perilously close to impenetrable for me.

I wonder if the same phenomenon occurs with texts written by people with similar skill levels in English, even if English is their first language. Do people who are prone to make errors in English understand error-prone English better than people who have a better handle on spelling and grammar?  If so, I wonder if they can understand error-prone English better than error-free English?

(Aside: I'm quite sure the gods of irony will have inserted a few errors of the sort that I don't usually make into this blog post.)

What if different kinds of lies were like apples and oranges?

Conventional wisdom is that politicians lie.

But when we say this, we usually mean "They don't keep their electoral promises." They say they're going to do something and then they don't, or they say they aren't going to do something and then they do.

But sometimes politicians lie about objective, observable facts.  And this is a problem, because they aren't just stating objectively incorrect information, they're also using the objectively incorrect information as a basis for questionable policy.

For example, a politician says there are more libraries than Tim Hortonses in their area, and therefore libraries should be cut. However, the fact of the matter is that there are more Tim Hortonses than libraries in their area.  And even if there were more libraries than Tim Hortonses, that wouldn't necessarily be a problem. And even if the ratio were a problem, perhaps the solution would be more Tim Hortonses.  And maybe the ratio is even a problem the other way - maybe there aren't enough libraries.  One possibility is that there are more libraries than Tim Hortonses but still not enough libraries (for example, if there were two libraries and one Tim Hortons, that wouldn't be enough libraries for the entire city.)

It creates a stream of hypotheticals that the people least likely to be willing or able to stay fully informed are least likely to be willing or able to follow. If you focus on debunking the clear, objective lie (more libraries than Tim Hortonses), you're implying that the problematic logic that follows (that more libraries than Tim Hortonses would be a problem, that libraries should be cut) is not a problem. If you focus on the problematic conclusions, you're implying that the false premise is accurate and failing to call out the politician for a glaring objective falsehood.

But not enough people see this lying about objective facts as a massive deal-breaker problem that needs to be immediately and drastically nipped in the bud, because we're coming from this baseline conventional wisdom that of course politicians lie.

This makes me wonder how our political discourse would be different if these different kinds of lies were completely different concepts in our language and concept system. We can, of course, describe the different kinds of lies that exist using words and phrases, like I've done above, but they're all lies.  What would happen if they were different concepts, like apples and oranges? Yes, apples and oranges have things in common (they're both round and sweet and edible, they both fall into the broader category of "fruit" in our concept system), but they're clearly different things in our concept system.

If different kinds of lies were apples and oranges, no one would say "Of course that politician is oranging, everyone knows that politicians always apple." No one would say "Why are you calling out that politician for oranging but not that other politician for appling?"  People could be aghast that the politician oranged without even having to address the conventional wisdom that politicians apple, because they're two completely different concepts.

I wonder what our political discourse would look like then?

I wonder if there are any languages where different types of lies are completely discrete concepts?  I wonder if the cultures where those languages are spoken also have the conventional wisdom that politicians lie?