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Off topic: Completely frivolous thread
Thread poster: Tom in London
Mervyn Henderson (X)
Mervyn Henderson (X)  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 14:39
Spanish to English
+ ...
Level 3 Oct 20, 2020

That's What My Money's On.

[Edited at 2020-10-20 15:37 GMT]


 
Matthias Brombach
Matthias Brombach  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 14:39
Member (2007)
Dutch to German
+ ...
But ... Oct 20, 2020

expressisverbis wrote:

Matthias Brombach wrote:

expressisverbis wrote:

A curious fact: Portuguese (European) to foreigners sounds like Russian. Honestly, I don't agree.


I don´t agree either: When I from a distance listen (by coincidence) to a conversation held in Portuguese, I´m sometimes not sure, whether Dutch is spoken, because of some phonetic patterns which remind me of Dutch. But only from a distance and when not knowing, what language actually is spoken.



I use to watch Rudolph van Veen, the Dutch TV chef, and no way
But from a distance... maybe

... Rudolph speaks Dutch, so I´m right, don´t you think?


expressisverbis
 
Mervyn Henderson (X)
Mervyn Henderson (X)  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 14:39
Spanish to English
+ ...
Hackneyed phrases Oct 20, 2020

Well, this is frivolous enough to qualify, sad though it is, with the added attraction that this way I get it out of my system instead of simply glaring in annoyance at a computer screen ...

I've just translated the following two sentences, in quick succession, for a website, under "About us":


We have a wide range of products and services.
We help our customers achieve their objectives.


I did consider making it a little more daring by re
... See more
Well, this is frivolous enough to qualify, sad though it is, with the added attraction that this way I get it out of my system instead of simply glaring in annoyance at a computer screen ...

I've just translated the following two sentences, in quick succession, for a website, under "About us":


We have a wide range of products and services.
We help our customers achieve their objectives.


I did consider making it a little more daring by replacing "wide" with "extensive", and "We help our customers ..." with "Our task is to help our customers ...", but I thought that might be beyond my remit.

How I wish sometimes the translator could add comments, e.g. in this case:

We have several vacancies in our Cutting-Edge Communications Department.
Collapse


P.L.F. Persio
expressisverbis
Thomas T. Frost
Christopher Schröder
Kay Denney
 
expressisverbis
expressisverbis
Portugal
Local time: 13:39
Member (2015)
English to Portuguese
+ ...
I imagined a reverse scenario Oct 20, 2020

Matthias Brombach wrote:

... Rudolph speaks Dutch, so I´m right, don´t you think?


When I listen to Rudolph van Veen, I cannot detect any phonetic traits that could have any resemblance to Portuguese.


P.L.F. Persio
 
Thomas T. Frost
Thomas T. Frost  Identity Verified
Portugal
Local time: 13:39
Danish to English
+ ...
Mae's liver Oct 20, 2020

Mervyn Henderson wrote:

It says Mae's tasty liver and onions are all gone, but there's some Arafwch pie left.


Apparently a cannibal is on the loose in Wales; no wonder the country is in lockdown. Has anyone heard from Mae recently?


P.L.F. Persio
expressisverbis
Mervyn Henderson (X)
 
Thomas T. Frost
Thomas T. Frost  Identity Verified
Portugal
Local time: 13:39
Danish to English
+ ...
Marketing Oct 20, 2020

Mervyn Henderson wrote:

We have a wide range of products and services.
We help our customers achieve their objectives.



They've probably paid a marketing consultant £50,000 for these pearls of wisdom. Better not spoil the fun.


P.L.F. Persio
Mervyn Henderson (X)
expressisverbis
 
Mervyn Henderson (X)
Mervyn Henderson (X)  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 14:39
Spanish to English
+ ...
@Thomas Oct 20, 2020

So true. A place we've all been to at some time or other. On a previous occasion I was on a 100-slide PowerPoint trundled out by some highfalutin 5P or 7S or 10R gurus, and after the usual tedious turdish slides with Objectives - Partial Objectives - General Objectives - Specific Objectives - Global Objectives - Strategic Objectives and quotes from Einstein and R.Q. Fickelfocker and the rest, there was one slide with "Maximise Revenue" in the middle of the page, nothing else, in huge letters wit... See more
So true. A place we've all been to at some time or other. On a previous occasion I was on a 100-slide PowerPoint trundled out by some highfalutin 5P or 7S or 10R gurus, and after the usual tedious turdish slides with Objectives - Partial Objectives - General Objectives - Specific Objectives - Global Objectives - Strategic Objectives and quotes from Einstein and R.Q. Fickelfocker and the rest, there was one slide with "Maximise Revenue" in the middle of the page, nothing else, in huge letters with one of those plasticine man-in-a-suit icons putting notes into a safe, followed by "Minimise Expenditure" on the next slide, with man-in-a-suit handing dollars to another plasticine man-in-overalls.

What you might call a Doh Moment ensued. I seriously considered contacting the gurus' customer and telling them that, if they wanted to know that a wheel goes round if you give it a shove, I could write all that out at half the price - no, at a quarter of the price - on two or three slides, and translate it too.

[Edited at 2020-10-20 17:16 GMT]
Collapse


Thomas T. Frost
expressisverbis
Christopher Schröder
P.L.F. Persio
 
Philippe Etienne
Philippe Etienne  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 14:39
Member
English to French
Trance-creation Oct 20, 2020

Mervyn Henderson wrote:
We have a wide range of products and services.
We help our customers achieve their objectives.

Thanks to our diversified portfolio of products and services, we can design one-stop-shop solutions tailored to the requirements and needs of our valued and beloved customers, while boosting their profitability and ultimately shaping a sustainable future for the benefit of all.

Philippe


expressisverbis
Mervyn Henderson (X)
Christopher Schröder
P.L.F. Persio
Beatriz Ramírez de Haro
Tom in London
Kay Denney
 
Thomas T. Frost
Thomas T. Frost  Identity Verified
Portugal
Local time: 13:39
Danish to English
+ ...
Or … Oct 20, 2020

Mervyn Henderson wrote:

So true. A place we've all been to at some time or other. On a previous occasion I was on a 100-slide PowerPoint trundled out by some highfalutin 5P or 7S or 10R gurus, and after the usual tedious turdish slides with Objectives - Partial Objectives - General Objectives - Specific Objectives - Global Objectives - Strategic Objectives and quotes from Einstein and R.Q. Fickelfocker and the rest, there was one slide with "Maximise Revenue" in the middle of the page, nothing else, in huge letters with one of those plasticine man-in-a-suit icons putting notes into a safe, followed by "Minimise Expenditure" on the next slide, with man-in-a-suit handing dollars to another plasticine man-in-overalls.

What you might call a Doh Moment ensued. I seriously considered contacting the gurus' customer and telling them that, if they wanted to know that a wheel goes round if you give it a shove, I could write all that out at half the price - no, at a quarter of the price - on two or three slides, and translate it too.


Of course, you could also reach out to the client to help them action a novel paradigm that optimises how to leverage linguistic corporate assets in win-win marketing strategy going forward.


P.L.F. Persio
Mervyn Henderson (X)
Beatriz Ramírez de Haro
Tom in London
Kay Denney
 
Matthias Brombach
Matthias Brombach  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 14:39
Member (2007)
Dutch to German
+ ...
That´s not ... Oct 21, 2020

expressisverbis wrote:

Matthias Brombach wrote:

... Rudolph speaks Dutch, so I´m right, don´t you think?


When I listen to Rudolph van Veen, I cannot detect any phonetic traits that could have any resemblance to Portuguese.


... what I claimed: I said, that - vice versa - when I listen to Portuguese from a distance or when the radio sound isn´t very clear, I sometimes do not know, whether Dutch is spoken or Portuguese. Not because of the linguistic structure of Portuguese or the general sound of this beautiful language, but because of some sounds your language "produces" (I cannot describe). A friend of mine from Austria says the same ... and a Polish friend, who grew up in France.


expressisverbis
 
Mervyn Henderson (X)
Mervyn Henderson (X)  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 14:39
Spanish to English
+ ...
Paradigm Oct 21, 2020

That's another one. I can see that people writing "new paradigm / novel paradigm / paradigm change" write it for the Wow factor and they and the readers only see it once, but with me and many others in this business it's a star word that just keeps limping on stage again and again, to encore after encore, until it might as well be the word "the".

P.L.F. Persio
Thomas T. Frost
Kay Denney
 
expressisverbis
expressisverbis
Portugal
Local time: 13:39
Member (2015)
English to Portuguese
+ ...
Matthias Oct 21, 2020

Matthias Brombach wrote:

expressisverbis wrote:

Matthias Brombach wrote:

... Rudolph speaks Dutch, so I´m right, don´t you think?


When I listen to Rudolph van Veen, I cannot detect any phonetic traits that could have any resemblance to Portuguese.


... what I claimed: I said, that - vice versa - when I listen to Portuguese from a distance or when the radio sound isn´t very clear, I sometimes do not know, whether Dutch is spoken or Portuguese. Not because of the linguistic structure of Portuguese or the general sound of this beautiful language, but because of some sounds your language "produces" (I cannot describe). A friend of mine from Austria says the same ... and a Polish friend, who grew up in France.


I'm sorry! I did not understand you. Ok, I got it now.
Thank you for the "beautiful language" compliment!
I like Galician-Portuguese (medieval language spoken in Galicia and northern Portugal)


Matthias Brombach
 
Thomas T. Frost
Thomas T. Frost  Identity Verified
Portugal
Local time: 13:39
Danish to English
+ ...
Paradigm Oct 21, 2020

Mervyn Henderson wrote:

That's another one. I can see that people writing "new paradigm / novel paradigm / paradigm change" write it for the Wow factor and they and the readers only see it once, but with me and many others in this business it's a star word that just keeps limping on stage again and again, to encore after encore, until it might as well be the word "the".


Management speak can be a treasure trove of meaningless and puffed-up twaddle, to state the obvious. I see it regularly and 'grew up with it' at IBM. I presume those who burden the rest of us with such tripe have a psychological need – perhaps they have a inferiority complex – to distinguish themselves from the hoi polloi, not realising they look ridiculous when they overdo it.

I can warmly recommend Scott Adams's book The Dilbert Principle. One can also find inspiration in The Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary.

Back in my IBM days, we had an internal, informal management gobbledygook generator that someone had developed. It contained a hardcoded list of sentence elements that it combined randomly.

[Edited at 2020-10-21 15:25 GMT]

[Edited at 2020-10-21 15:29 GMT]


expressisverbis
Mervyn Henderson (X)
P.L.F. Persio
 
expressisverbis
expressisverbis
Portugal
Local time: 13:39
Member (2015)
English to Portuguese
+ ...
Thank you for this dictionary! Oct 21, 2020

I have already added it to My Dictionaries bookmark.

[Edited at 2020-10-21 15:21 GMT]

[Edited at 2020-10-21 15:21 GMT]


P.L.F. Persio
 
Kay Denney
Kay Denney  Identity Verified
France
Local time: 14:39
French to English
. Oct 22, 2020

Thomas T. Frost wrote:

Mervyn Henderson wrote:

That's another one. I can see that people writing "new paradigm / novel paradigm / paradigm change" write it for the Wow factor and they and the readers only see it once, but with me and many others in this business it's a star word that just keeps limping on stage again and again, to encore after encore, until it might as well be the word "the".


Management speak can be a treasure trove of meaningless and puffed-up twaddle, to state the obvious. I see it regularly and 'grew up with it' at IBM. I presume those who burden the rest of us with such tripe have a psychological need – perhaps they have a inferiority complex – to distinguish themselves from the hoi polloi, not realising they look ridiculous when they overdo it.

I can warmly recommend Scott Adams's book The Dilbert Principle. One can also find inspiration in The Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary.

Back in my IBM days, we had an internal, informal management gobbledygook generator that someone had developed. It contained a hardcoded list of sentence elements that it combined randomly.

[Edited at 2020-10-21 15:25 GMT]

[Edited at 2020-10-21 15:29 GMT]

I highly recommend the book "Death Sentence", about corporatespeak ruining language. My business translations sound so much more authentic now that I use all the idioms that get trashed in there


expressisverbis
Thomas T. Frost
P.L.F. Persio
 
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Completely frivolous thread






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