h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

>> ...'embezzling sleep: open or close down embezzling sleep alarm' ...<<



I hold your experience in the highest regard so I take your assessment, that these sorts of things are a 'vocabulary' problem, as true until proven otherwise.

But two thoughts on this subject have always puzzled me.

Why is it the oriental languages (Japlish and Chinglish ) which are most often guilty of such extreme malapropisms?

To a large degree it is likely we are exposed to more of it thru our importation of goods (instructions included) from the far east, but my experience of other forrin speakers in English has never shown me such extremes. Mispronunciations aplenty, the occassional misuse of a word - though often close enough for folk music - but never such atrocities as 'embezzlement' for whatever it was meant to mean.

And if it is a peculiarly 'oriental' situation, is there something in the culture or the nature of their egos or manufacturing philosophy that allows such errors to go unnoticed?

peace
~j~

I think it is a great display of confidence - I wouldn't dare send out something (e.g. instructions for use) for printing - let alone publishing - which hadn't been thoroughly checked, preferably by a native speaker, and/or someone who has no previous knowledge of the object being described, to see if it was correct and understandable.

Hypothesis:
These things are put together by Chinese and Japanese men, who, true to the global male stereotype, never read the instructions anyway.

TC - I spent much of the last ten years begging colleagues to run things past me for free proofreading. But full professors obviously felt they would be losing face in what was supposedly an English medium university.[I still feel that the university lost more face by posting public notices with mistakes in]
Embezzling sleep = snooze alarm
Squiggles - sorry I don't seem to have a tilde on this keyboard- most elementary Chinglish errors are vocab, caused by using a Chinese English dictionary,despite being told not to about once a week if they were my students. Difficulties arise because there are many more words in English than Chinese and because we have so many words that have more than one meaning. Even my fertile imagination cannot discern any connection between embezzle and snooze, however.
The commonest grammar mistake is misuse or lack of articles.
The upside (?) of this is that my neighbour thinks I can read Chinese

'If translation were possible, it wouldn't be necessary'.

I find it important to use a dictionary which does more than just match a word for a word, but lets you look around at the wider context...as it were to get a feel for where the word fits within its language. Eg - you take an English word, find its possible translations, find the possibilities for translating them back into English, look at how they're used within idioms, etc.

I've found a few good online dictionaries that allow you to do this:

German:
http://dict.tu-chemnitz.de/

French:
http://www.french-linguistics.co.uk/dictionary/

Spanish:
http://eubd1.ugr.es/

I wonder...might the Chinese characters for 'Sleep' and 'Steal' look similar?

It starts to make sense now.
TC's suggestion of 'overconfidence' suggests bravado, going for it, damning the torpedoes and a general posture of self promotion thru risk-taking in cultures that admire a take-charge attitude. But only if it works.

The notion of losing face (as star suggests) is also a very large part of the oriental psyche so self promotion thru machismo does seem at first illogical. Why would they be hell bent on risking severe lose of face in a society with so many rituals governing embarrassment and shame.

But perhaps it is inevitable when we add to that an imbalance in the breadth and scope of the lexicons. One can appreciate their difficulty in being fully aware of the complex vocabulary of the English language. It has always seemed to me that oriental languages are more about tone, register and mood than subtle content.

Meanwhile, we in the west are becoming more reluctant to admit our errors or to confess to feelings of shame or embarrassment; we have even pretty much stopped apologising or even acknowledging our trespasses, going into denial when charged and creating a whole new euphemistic vocabulary to excuse and explain our words and actions.


~jwf~

>> 'Sleep' and 'Steal' <<

Or maybe 'sneak'.
~j~

Well I gues whoever was responsible for this was reading the wrong sort of dictionary:

http://engrishfunny.com/2008/08/13/engrish-gynecology-and-obstetrics-dept/

Although - it's often said that the best way to learn a language is to take a native-speaking lover...

Why should the Chinese symbols for "sleep" "steal" or "sneak" be similar just because the words sound similar in English?

In a way I can see where the confusion arose. I suspect the button they were referring to was the 'snooze' button, rather than the 'sleep button. A snooze can be regarded as snatched, or even stolen sleep, particularly when ignoring the alarm is concerned.

While the l/r pronunciation problem is well known, there is also an l/n confusion. Also consonant clusters are very difficult for most Chinese speakers: so 'sle' and 'sne' would sound pretty similar.

Imagine my surprise upon researching the truth to learn that one of the favourite Latin quotes among existential philosophers and practitioners is today most often used in error thru a melodramatic exaggeration.

>>
cui bono
1604, a L. phrase from Cicero. It means "to whom for a benefit," or "who profits by it?" NOT "to what good purpose?" as is often erroneously claimed.
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper
<<


~jwf~

Another citation:

>>
Cui bono
Cui` bo"no\ [L.] Lit., for whose benefit; incorrectly understood, it came to be used in the sense, of what good or use; and hence, (what) purpose; object; specif., the ultimate object of life.
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.
<<

'the ultimate object of life'
Has a familiar wring to it.

peace
~j~

That often happens with old Latin sayings. For example, the legal rule:

de mortuis nil nisi bonum

Means literally, "nothing but good be said about the dead", but the meaning is that it is not possible to slander someone once they are dead. You can say anything you like about them, good or bad, and it will be treated as good by the law.

It is commonly used to mean "you should not say anything bad about the dead".

de mortuis nil nisi bonum

Means literally, "nothing but good be said about the dead"...

No, *literally* it means "of the dead nothing will be said good" (I guess). Although maybe that depends on how literal one wants to be.

literally - of the dead nothing EXCEPT good. You've left out the translation of 'nisi'. There isn't anything about who's saying what.
You could take it as a prohibition.
Why did Bono take that name? Who benefits from that I'd like to know?
I stopped Latin at hic, haec, hoc fifty years ago but there are several people on this thread with more recent experience.

>> de mortuis nil nisi bonum <<

My Latin's so rusty I'da said it meant 'of the dead nothing unless good'. A less literal version might be 'nothing good comes of being dead' or even 'death is nothing unless you're good'.

Yes, nisi means unless. It is used in legalese to suggest conditions that must be met as in a 'decree nisi', a granting of divorce unless someone objects.

The more familiar adage of prohibition one might hear today would be: 'Never speak ill of the dead'.
But that must come from yet another less than literal translation since 'illness' and 'speaking' just aren't mentioned in the original.

Aha!
The trouble with the original quote is that 'dicendum est' has been left off it.

So sayeth the Wiki: "The Latin phrase de mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum est is usually shortened to de mortuis nil nisi bonum or sometimes just nil nisi bonum. It is variously translated as "No one can speak ill of the dead," "Of the dead, speak no evil," or, more literally, "Let nothing be said of the dead but what is good."

As for Bono I think it's short for Bonobo.

~jwf~

PS: Also to be considered here is Gnomon's wit. In my posting about cui bono I alluded to the possibility that it may have been influential in DNA's construction of the Ultimate question. And such a suggestion might be seen as unfair to the author who is no longer able to defend his work.

As I said before, the phrase is taken to mean "you should not speak ill of the dead", but it actually means "you cannot speak ill of the dead".

Bono got his name from a shortening of Bonovox. This was the name of a hearing aid on sale in Dublin many years ago, but means literally "good voice". Bono felt that described him and adopted the name.

An essay on 'Uncleftish Beholding' (ie Atomic Theory)

"The following item shows what English would look like if it
were purged of its non-Germanic words, and used German-style
compounds instead of borrowings to express new concepts."

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.language.artificial/msg/69250bac6c7cbaff

I hereby propose that we adopt the word "minglingish" What a great article!