Metrolingua

Kanji practice site

2009-11-09T22:30:00.022-06:00

Wow, Dartmouth has some really nice Japanese resources. They built a kanji site where you can practice reading, listening, and even watching someone write the kanji in a mini video! And the person who is voicing the Japanese sentences sounds excellent--obvious a native speaker who knows how to read beautifully. It has up to 400 kanji, and you can listen to the on-yomi and kun-yomi readings of each character and follow along with the transcription of what is being said. A very good site--one of the reasons why I'm glad universities have lots of money.

Talking with my friend George about Japanese and Hong Kong

2009-11-07T22:29:00.002-06:00

My friend George, a really nice guy who I met in Japanese class a few years ago, moved to Hong Kong and was back in town visiting family and friends before starting a new teaching gig over there. I asked him about Hong Kong and learning Japanese, because he plans to move back to Japan one day. So here's the audio (it's 4 minutes), which includes a recommendation for Japanese Pod 101.

The voice of Mythbusters

2009-11-05T00:46:00.003-06:00

I've been watching Mythbusters for a while, and I've assumed the narrator is American. But tonight I heard the word "against" pronounced "a-GAIN-st". Americans say "a-genst"--NEVER pronounce the "gain" literally--ie, use the long "a" sound that you think would be applied to the "ai" combination.

So I thought the narrator was Canadian, since I've heard Canadians pronounce some words in a more British way. (Canadians' accent is between British and American, though I'd say they sound way more American than British). So I did a quick search, and found out on a fan site that he was born in England, "grew up in North America" and now lives in Australia. It sounds like he probably spent at least part of his time in Canada, because otherwise they'd specifically say that he grew up in the United States or Canada, unless he wants to be vague about his background.

Anyway, he's a very successful voiceover guy in Australia--he's probably one of the go-to voices for people over there who want an American accent. But from my perspective, his English sounds more international than just American. If you listen to the demos on his site, you'll hear him say "bean" for "been" (whereas we say "bin" for "been"). And he seems to slip into slight non-American accents when he says other words.

Well whatever his accent is, he's probably making a great living from speaking, so congrats to him!

Writing "awhile" for "a while"

2009-11-01T22:19:00.003-06:00

For some reason, I have trouble wrapping my mind around "a while" vs. "awhile." The rule is simple enough, according to daily writing tips:

"A while is a noun meaning “a length of time”

“I slept for a while.”
- (compare with “I slept for a bit” and “I slept for three hours”)
“I was away from my desk for a while.”
- (compare with “I was away from my desk for two minutes”)

Awhile is an adverb, meaning “for a time,” or literally, “for a while”.

“I slept awhile before dinner.”
(compare with “I slept deeply before dinner” and “I slept badly before dinner”.)

As you can see, the words can be used almost interchangeably in some cases – but a while needs to be accompanied by a preposition, such as “for” (“I slept for a while”) or “ago” (“I left work a while ago”). Awhile always means “for a while”.

Logically, this makes sense, with prepositions, "a while" is used, while "awhile" is used as a stand-alone adverb. I am not sure why "a while" looks so wrong to me even when it is used correctly. It is also curious because English lacks analogous pairs like "alot" and "a lot" or "akimbo" and "a kimbo." Usually only one choice applies to most, if not all, situations. Hence, the "awhile"/"a while" dichotomy may strike my eyes as strange, especially since, as the description states, "the words can be used almost interchangeably in some cases."

(Posted by language fan and friend Silas McCracken. And feel free to join his Facebook fan page too.)

I was actually responsible today

2009-10-30T21:49:00.003-05:00

I've had a strange schedule lately, so today I decided to take it easy while it was raining outside. I was quite lazy, though I did manage to do a bit of work, but I didn't do laundry or clean or even read any of my books.

Then I thought, "Hey, I should study Japanese today since there was no class last night," but I didn't want to read anything online because I'd already killed lots of time watching various episodes of comedians and stupid sitcoms, and I'm not one of those folks who likes to spend a ton of time online.

The option was to go to the Japanese Consulate, where they have a library that's open to the public every weekday. I figured if I went there, surrounded by Japanese books and magazines, and even some Japanese people, it would force me to study. So after I managed to break through my laziness, I actually went there, got a kanji dictionary and Japanese-English dictionary off the shelf, grabbed a manga, and got to work.

Since I got there not too far before closing time, I didn't study as long as I wanted, but at least I did! So I'll be going back next week because I've discovered that I *can* be responsible and disciplined when Japanese beckons :D

Obama as a Japanese verb

2009-10-27T22:09:00.003-05:00

Mad Minerva told me about a blog about Japan that reports the use of Obama as a verb:

obamu: (v.) To ignore inexpedient and inconvenient facts or realities, think “Yes we can, Yes we can,” and proceed with optimism using those facts as an inspiration (literally, as fuel). It is used to elicit success in a personal endeavor. One explanation holds that it is the opposite of kobamu. (拒む, which means to refuse, reject, or oppose).

I pasted this sample sentence ほら、何落ち込んでいるんだよ。オバめよ、オバめ。that he used in his blog into Popjisyo (which is now my homepage) and they had no translation for オバめ ("obame"). So it's a really new, and possibly obscure, phrase...until now, because it looks like a lot of people are blogging about it :D

Photos from Friday's Reading

2009-10-25T22:00:00.001-05:00

Reading tonight!

2009-10-23T09:28:00.002-05:00

The Down the Block reading is happening tonight: Friday, October 23, from 7 to 8 PM, at Quimby's Bookstore, 1854 W. North Avenue in Chicago. Four people will read their contributions, and the event is free. Hope to see you there!

Why use "some"?

2009-10-21T21:20:00.002-05:00

I've noticed that people use the word "some" quite often when they offer statistics. For instance, I was watching a documentary, and the narrator said, "There were some 30 million gallons of water." That doesn't sound like "some" to me--that's a lot!

I know that they don't literally mean "some" as in "not many", but they don't need to use that word at all. Why not say, "There were 30 billion gallons of water."

If you listen to various narratives, news reports, or commentaries carefully, you'll hear people use the word "some" when they're about to offer information. And you'll also notice that it's not necessary. I wonder when this trend started.

Is It All Right To Use "Alright"?

2009-10-19T22:00:00.000-05:00

English is notorious for its baffling spelling rules and its seemingly capricious and arbitrary differentiations as to what is correct and incorrect. I am thinking specifically of "all right" and "alright."

Native speakers of English often spell "all right" as "alright." For instance, the British group the Who released a song called 'The Kids are Alright' (also used as the title of a British-made documentary about the group). Nevertheless, many people (including me) have been taught that "alright" is not a word and that it should always be written "all right."

For instance, an article intended to prepare candidates for the SAT university entrance exam advises that "Alright is all wrong. Use the two-word form, all right." Similarly, a website listing commonly confused English words dictates "All right. NEVER alright."

It's not that simple, though. After all, English has the acceptable pairs "all together" and "altogether," as well as "all ready" and "already." So why not "all right" and "alright"? Apparently "alright" and "all right" have both had a now-you-see-it-now-you-don't existence, and despite the efforts of prescriptionists to banish "alright" to the linguistic corner, it frequently creeps up in well-respected journalism and literary works.

The SAT Prep article continues:

this requires a bit of explanation. Alright is now widely used, particularly in informal settings such as blogs, emails, text messages, instant messages, tweets, and even some classrooms. Many well-known writers, including James Joyce and Langston Hughes, have used it in literature. It is ubiquitous in written dialog and, sadly, in student papers.

In fact, according to Merriam-Webster Online, the single word alright has been in use since 1887.
The two-word phrase all right was used more than five hundred years ago, spelled al right by Chaucer around the year 1385. The word fell out of favor, then returned to common usage later, when Percy Bysshe Shelley employed it in Scenes from Goethe's Faust.

In any case, all right is the much older form. It remains the standard for use in formal writing today. Alright should be used, if at all, only in informal writing.

I scratch my head and wonder about this logic. If "all right" (written as "al right") was used in the 14th century, only to vanish for roughly 400 years and subsequently reappear as "all right," followed a mere few decades later by "alright," how did "alright" become entirely incorrect instead of just a less common variant? Was it simply a case of "the fastest spelling wins the race"?

There does not, to my mind, seem to be a rational reason why one spelling should be regarded as incorrect especially since both have been widely used by English speakers of varying levels of education and literacy. The notion of incorrect vs. correct seems due to narrow-minded convention ("we spell it this way to not offend any fussy English teachers out there") rather than being founded on any linguistic basis. The flimsiness of the "alright" ban may be why such dictionaries as the American Heritage Dictionary now (as of 1996) list "alright" as an alternate spelling rather than a misspelling. Still, "old-school" teachers and editors may wince and continue to perceive it as incorrect, hence prompting the word of caution in the SAT Prep article.

It makes me wonder who decides the rules of natural language-average speakers who actually speak and write natural languages or small groups of elitist prescriptionists who have an idealized view of how we "should" speak and write, whether the issue is "alright" vs. "all right," a split infinitive, or a preposition precariously placed at the end of a question.

(Posted by language fan and friend Silas McCracken. And feel free to join his Facebook fan page too.)

Some language excitement

2009-10-16T23:41:00.003-05:00

I've been using the Cyberduck ftp client, and I want to donate something, so I went to the donate page. He asks for either financial donations, or a purchase from his Amazon wishlist, so I went there, and saw that it's in German!

Okay, it doesn't seem like a big deal, but it is to me because I always go to the English Amazon site, and that's just normal for me. But to see "Wunschzettel" and all the directions and listings in German is just exciting. So is the explanation:

Ein Wunschzettel ist eine persönliche Liste all der Dinge, die Sie oder Ihre Firma gerne hätten und die wir auf unserer Website für Sie anbieten. Freunde, Verwandte und alle anderen, die es gut mit Ihnen meinen, können damit das perfekte Geschenk für Sie finden.

But what's weird is that when you click on the "wunschzettel" link, the url is www.amazon.de/gp/registry/wishlist, ie, it's the extension ".de" instead of ".com", but the rest is in English: "registry/wishlist".

I wonder if German speakers are bothered by the fact that their url is in English instead of their language. Maybe there are some indignant people out there nodding their heads right now.

Flash torch?

2009-10-14T23:20:00.002-05:00

Well I guess I keep learning new English words from British TV because I was watching another episode of Inspector Lewis last night (which makes that two nights in a row of Lewis enjoyment) and Lewis' sergeant said "flash torch" instead of the American English word "flashlight".

I've often heard Brits say "torch" when referring to "flashlight" but I hadn't heard the word "flash torch" until last night. Honestly, I think that using the word "torch" for a battery-operated item seems odd because a "torch" has a flame, so it needs no batteries. Like the Olympic torch. If an American used the word "torch" for a flashlight, people would think they're really weird, or at least a British wannabe. And "flash torch" sounds almost sci-fi.

Do the Brits come from such an ancient civilization that they had to refer to a modern device using an older term? It's like technology evolved and someone said, "Hey, let's just call it a torch--we don't have much time to think of something else!" If only they could've looked to us Americans to provide a good word for it. Then they wouldn't be walking around using elemental concepts for evolutionary instruments.

A language lesson from Inspector Lewis

2009-10-11T21:49:00.003-05:00

I was watching the excellent Mystery series Inspector Lewis, and he actually taught us something about British English: he said the word "colleague", and then said that people in the north use the word "workmate" instead.

Thanks Inspector! I had no idea. No wonder they use that word a lot in the British press.

This is authentic?

2009-10-09T21:55:00.003-05:00

Food companies must think consumers are really stupid because they use words such as "gourmet" and "authentic" to convince people that their products are the "highest quality", even though their ingredients tell a different story. Such as this company: they say that they've been offering "authentic foods since 1908".

Take a look at these ingredients from one dinner. Do they seem "authentic"? And have they really been using these ingredients since 1908?

Enchiladas: Tortilla: Corn flour (ground corn, trace of lime), water. Filling: Water, dehydrated cheese powder (corn syrup, American cheese [milk, culture, salt, enzymes], food starch-modified, whey, partially hydrogenated oil [coconut and/or soybean], salt, butter [milkfat], nonfat milk, buttermilk, disodium phosphate, sodium caseinate, mono & di-glycerides, citric acid, sodium stearoyl lactylate, sodium citrate, dipotassium phosphate, natural flavor, natural and artificial colors [annatto, paprika, FD & C Yellow #5, FD & C Yellow #6, Beta Carotene], and carrageenan), Cheddar Cheese: (cultured pasteurized milk, salt, enzymes, annatto [color]), modified food starch, imitation cheddar cheese (water, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, casein, modified food starch, contains 2% or less of: salt, kasal, sodium citrate, lactic acid, cellulose powder, sorbic acid [to preserve freshness], artificial flavor, artificial color), contains 2% or less of: dehydrated onion. Red Chile Sauce: Water, shortening (beef fat and cottonseed oil, BHT added to improve stability), Bleached wheat flour enriched (niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), flavorings including paprika, contains 2% or less of: modified food starch, chili powder (chili pepper, salt, spices, garlic powder), dehydrated soy sauce flavor (soy sauce [soy bean, salt, corn syrup], yeast extract and partially hydrogenated soybean oil), salt, beef base (salt, soy sauce[Naturally fermented wheat & soybeans, salt, maltodextrin and caramel color], maltodextrin, yeast extract, dextrose, modified food starch, caramel color, dehydrated onion, silicon dioxide, corn oil, natural flavor), lactic acid, guar gum. Beans: Water, pinto beans, contains 2% or less of: shortening (beef fat and cottonseed oil, BHT added to improve stability), salt, flavorings, modified food starch, chili powder (chili pepper, salt, spices, garlic powder). Spanish Rice: Cooked rice (water, rice), water, tomato paste, bell peppers, contains 2% or less of: flavorings including paprika, modified food starch, salt, dehydrated onion, vegetable oil (canola and/or soybean), sugar and citric acid. Topping: Imitation Cheddar cheese (water, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, casein, modified food starch, contains 2% or less of: salt, kasal, sodium citrate, lactic acid, cellulose powder, sorbic acid [to preserve freshness], artificial flavor, artificial color).

When Alice's White Rabbit becomes a White Kangaroo

2009-10-06T18:10:00.004-05:00

As an adult, I read Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and marveled at the use of puns, inversions, and other types of wordplay such as the following dialogue:

"Why did you call him tortoise, if he wasn't one?" Alice asked.
"We call him Tortoise because he taught us," said the Mock Turtle angrily. "Really, you are very dull." (Chapter IX)

or

"That's the reason they're called lessons," the Gryphon remarked: "because they lessen from day to day." (Chapter IX)

While I found Carroll's writing to be witty, as a translator, I wondered how on earth Carroll's classic could have been translated into other languages, and, according to Wikipedia, the work has been translated into 125 languages. For instance, the play on "Tortoise" and "taught us" would be completely lost in French or Spanish, as would the play on "lesson" and "lessen." An exceptional pun or rhyme might be dealt with neatly with a footnote, but so much of the novel consists of these clever linguistic maneuvers that would seem to only work in English.

I recently did a Google search to find out how translators may have handled this particularly tricky work. In 1999, Sílvia Mas interviewed translator Salvador Oliva in An Interview With Salvador Oliva: Translating Alice in Wonderland into Catalan. In the interview, Oliva states that

Sometimes the content itself is not so important because it is not referential language. Therefore, it can always be replaced. The fundamental aspect for me is the rhyme. not referential language. Therefore, it can always be replaced...the translator has to alter the meaning. It is unavoidable.

Essentially Oliva creates new puns that keep the tone and basic suggestion of the original text, even if the “translation” is not literal.

Vladimir Nabokov, perhaps best known for his infamous work Lolita, produced a Russian translation of Carroll's classic. Leigh Kimmel writes that

while most of the earlier translators of Alice in Wonderland had simply given up on trying to preserve the humor of the puns and had simply translated the words as they were, Nabokov instead tried to find pairs of near-homophones in Russian which would be equally humorous for the Russian reader.

In Exploring Translation and Multilingual Text Production: Beyond Content (Erich Steiner and Colin Yallop, 2001) discuss (pp. 232-238) Nancy Sheppard's translation of Carroll's work into the Australian aboriginal language Pitjantjatjara. Not only does Sheppard have to deal with all the wordplay, but also a very English context that is decidedly out of place in the central Australian desert. Hence the concept of Alice in Wonderland has been translated as "Alitji in the Dreamtime." Instead of seeing a white rabbit, Alitji sees a white kangaroo. The dormouse becomes a koala. Furthermore, l ike Oliva and Nabokov, Sheppard creates new puns that are intended to suggest the spirit of the original puns to readers even if the actual content has been changed.

Translators are, by nature, given the task of rendering the meaning, tone, and spirit of a source text in one language faithfully into a target text in a second language. Often this does not pose a problem and can be accomplished by skilled professionals. However, sometimes in more creative texts, such as poetry or in documents involving the use of wordplay exclusive to the source language, a choice must be made, and either the literal meaning or the spirit must be sacrificed. This represents a gray, murky area in the dynamic field of translation and also underscores the need for qualified human translators to carry out such translations. Indeed, as faulty as "computerized" translations (such as those offered by Babelfish) of straightforward documents might be, it would, at this point, seem nearly impossible for such a work as Alice to be translated effectively by such software.

(Posted by language fan and friend Silas McCracken. And feel free to join his Facebook fan page too.)

Pink castle!

2009-10-04T22:13:00.003-05:00

I sometimes read the Japanese Yahoo site to practice my reading skills, and I found this pretty pink castle. The Japanese caption says that the Nagoya Castle was lit up pink to raise awareness for the early detection of breast cancer. The castle is located within the city, and it's being restored, so that's why there's a construction site there.

Parabéns?

2009-10-02T01:04:00.003-05:00

Will be we be saying "Parabéns" to Rio? I hope so, and I live in Chicago. Take the Olympics, please.

Update: Parabéns!

Freelance worker

2009-09-29T23:45:00.004-05:00

I was talking to someone about what working "freelance" means, and I found a good definition at About.com, which lists four categories: Independent Contractors, On-Call Workers, Temporary Help Agency Workers, and Workers Provided by Contract Firms. I think the "independent contractors" definition is good for a freelance worker, and the source is reliable (the IRS):

The U.S. Internal Revenue Service defines the role of independent contractors this way: "A general rule is that you, the payer, have the right to control or direct only the result of the work done by an independent contractor, and not the means and methods of accomplishing the result."

Also, freelance workers have to pay all their taxes, unlike part-time workers, whose taxes and social security are partly paid by the employer. And part-timers have to show up at certain times and the employer controls them more.

Many people freelance, but definitely more people would love to have a decent full-time job where they don't have to worry about getting work. But a lot of people are finding out that it's hard to keep such jobs now.

Invented languages

2009-09-27T21:35:00.003-05:00

I found an online artificial language lab with a list of invented languages and various data and commentary. There's no "about" section, so I don't know why the guy set up the site, but it's interesting and he really seems to love language!

There's also a faq page, including explanations on why artificial languages are "useful and interesting".

Why mix?

2009-09-24T16:35:00.004-05:00

I ended up watching a show from India called Bollywood Unlimited, which is in English even though it covers the Indian film industry. They even have English subtitles when an Indian language (Hindi?) celebrity is talking to the media.

What I noticed, other than how different it is from American Hollywood shows, is that when the actors were being interviewed, they'd speak mostly in Hindi, but would occasionally throw English words in. Why do they mix languages? Why not just go for 100% Hindi? Is that common in India? I have no idea.

After a while, it was fun to listen to them speak while reading the subtitles, and try to figure out which English words they were using and how long they'd stick with them before slipping back into Hindi. I think switching between languages is technically called code-switching.

I can't find an extensive site for the show, but I did find a blog that has the same name, and it seems to have some good info (at least according to the poster's self-opinion) about what's going on there.

Ought we to use "the Aughts"?

2009-09-21T23:55:00.003-05:00

With only a few months left of this decade, there seems to be a lack of consensus on what this decade should be called in English. The 1990s were nicely summarized as "the nineties," the 1980s as "the eighties," and so on. However, English, despite its seemingly legendary flexibility, has seemed unable to produce a decisive term for the years 2000 to 2009.

In The Age of the Aughts, Mark Peters discusses the use of "aughts" to refer to the 00s and writes:

A gold star for word-predicting should go to Visual Thesaurus Editor Ben Zimmer, who speculated on OUP Blog in 2007 that "aughts" had a good chance of winning the race, despite the fact that "aught" isn’t exactly a common word for zero. Zimmer noted that the archaic-sounding word is commonly used in the United States to describe the years 1900 to 1909, and that "mid-aughts" was already starting to pick up steam, potentially sparing us the silliness of no-naming, which Zimmer explained was "…when a radio station announces that it plays ‘hits from the ’80s, ’90s… and today!’

Despite the success of "aughts," recent tweets show some people are still paralyzed--or at least amused--with uncertainty as to how they will linguistically look back on 2000 to 2009:

"Amazing how 9 years into this decade there’s still no consensus on what to call it. Can we just go with @maddow’s ‘two-thousandsies’?"
Aug. 21, 2009 Mike McCaffrey

"So we had the 60’s, 70’s 80’s, and 90’s. But what will we call this decade? I'm gonna vote for the Zero’s!"
Aug. 19, 2009 shaythai

"Considering its focus on terror and uncertainty, I propose we call this decade ‘The Dread Naughts’"
Aug. 18, 2009 Fred Zelany

"@rands I propose we call this decade ‘The Holes."
Aug. 18, 2009 rstevens

Wikipedia writes:

Determining a name for the decade has been problematic, especially in the United States. In 1999, anticipating the upcoming awkwardness, a U.S. group calling itself "Project Naughtie" ran a viral campaign in an attempt to popularize "the Naughties" as the decade's name. The term is a portmanteau of naught, meaning "nothing" or "zero", and the names of other decades such as the eighties and nineties, with the intentional implication of naughty as being uninhibited. A limited number of the media has made some use of the term as well, including the BBC (using the common British spelling, nought). The Naughties version was also broadcast regularly in morning news bulletins on UK radio station Atlantic 252 between the end of 1998 and Christmas 1999. An Australian website used the name from 1998. The Noughties is also used in the UK Both spellings have gained some currency among the legitimate press in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Australia, but there still remains no consensus on what term to use.

In some other languages, such as French, this would appear to be less of a problem. The "sixties," for instance, are known as "les années 60" (the '60 years). Analogously, this decade is "les années 2000." In Spanish, as well, the "sixties" are "los años 60" (the '60 years), and this decade is "los años 2000."

Perhaps, in true dramatic fashion, a "silver bullet" will arrive this December 31, with the suggestion of a perfect term that pleases everyone. As this is unlikely to happen, we will probably be left with a multitude of options, such as those that Peters proposes:

Other names suggested over the years have included the "diddly-squats," "the double naughts," "the double nuts," "the double ohs," "the double zeroes," "the goose eggs," "the naughties," "the naughts," "the nillies," "the nots," "the oh-ohs," "the pre-teens," "the uh-ohs," "the unies," "the zeds," "the zero zeros," and "the zilches." "The aughts" feels like an antique by comparison, a verbal relic like "thou" or "fishmonger". But some antiques still get the job done.

(Posted by language fan and friend Silas McCracken. And feel free to join his Facebook fan page too.)

The "its" is wrong

2009-09-19T22:57:00.004-05:00

Cristina said the " its' " on this sign is "driving me crazy every day on my way to work", and when I saw the picture (which isn't completely clear because she took it with her cell phone), I just had to post it here.

Dear historical sign people: if it's possessive, it's supposed to be ITS (ie, no apostrophe)!

They're probably planning for a hit

2009-09-17T23:55:00.002-05:00

There's a lot of news about the murder of the Yale student, and there's so much drama and frequent updates about it, I'm guessing that the publishing folks in New York and the TV/movie folks in Los Angeles are already writing or at least planning a story about it. They can probably see the potential of such a story, and would be dumb to not take advantage of it.

So I wonder how many professional story tellers are writing their treatment right now. How many studio execs or producers are doing a basic outline, just in case this murder case is resolved? And I'm sure someone will be able to write a book quickly just by using news reports to do the outline.

When some type of TV drama or book comes out, I'll just say I told you so.

English that's probably been translated from Japanese or that's just odd

2009-09-15T23:35:00.005-05:00

I ended up at the website of Zoom, a Japanese company that makes sound gear. The Japanese version of the site is interesting, of course, but what's even more interesting is the English version.

The writing is a little stilted. It's not just wordy, but seems rigid, so I've concluded that it's probably been translated from Japanese. At least some of the site has probably been translated, because going from Japanese to English is VERY hard and sometimes people get so caught up in translating, they forget to check if the English sounds natural, not Japanese-Englishy (yes, that "y" at the end was intentional).

On one part of the Zoom site, they have this odd sentence that I had to read twice because I wasn't sure why they used the word "some" in front of "engineers":

The company was so named by a group of founding some engineers who chose "Zoom" for the simple reason that it would stand out in an alphabetical listing by starting with the letter "Z."

Another odd thing I noticed is that one of the links on the right and the title of the page say "The Zoom History". Usually an English site would say "Zoom's History" or "The History of Zoom" ie, there would be no "the" at the beginning. The difference between "the" and "a", and the correct use of articles, are hard for non-native speakers to figure out, which is another sign that the site wasn't at least checked by a native speaker.

There are also either typos, as in "Nearly all of Zoom products..." (there has to be a possessive there) or lack of plurals. On the FAQ page, they say "Common Question"--but there is more than one! So obviously it should be "questions". And what about the top navigation area? One of the buttons says "Product", as in "We only offer one product". English sites would probably never keep it singular unless they were literally offering just ONE product.

There are plenty of native English speakers in Japan who know how to write English well, and Japanese companies usually have the money to hire good English copywriters and editors (as opposed to companies in poorer countries that just plop a non-native English speaker in front of a computer and tell them to translate or write the English themselves because it's a lot cheaper than hiring a foreigner who would definitely do it a lot better). It's just too bad that they don't make sure their English looks good.

But at least they had the incredible talent to create both an English and Japanese site--that's hard to build!

Save the date!

2009-09-13T23:29:00.003-05:00

I've mentioned in other posts and in my profile that I put an anthology together with contributions from bloggers and good writers that I know in Chicago and elsewhere. Well I've organized a reading next month. Here's the info:

When: Friday, October 23 at 7:00 PM
Where: Quimby's Bookstore, 1854 W. North Avenue in Chicago
Cost: FREE

So far, four of the contributors are going to read: John Banas, Sharyn Elman, Hugh Iglash, and Peter Zelchenko. If you want to hear audio of them, listen here. A full preview of the book is below.

Down the Block