Posts Tagged ‘english’
A catalog of this year’s risky articles #2010
Risk is something which can be difficult to evaluate for the average person, there is a lot of work which goes in to learning not to do the two things that people usually do when they are confronted with risk:
- Ignore
- Overreact
Facebook is the new Portal for Insurers and Banks #social #finance
It looks like every man and his dog needs to have a Facebook page, even banks…
@Google and @FaceBook battle over the back of @FriendFeed? #social #feedburner
It has been almost 1.5 weeks since Google’s FeedBurner removed the Frie…
Prosper allows loans to fund Kiva projects #microfinance
Some days ago I tweeted to Prosper, a personal loan marketplace, whether they…
Social Revolution – Do You Get It?
I don’t really think most people get “it” when it comes to …
Secret Google campaign against Hyves? #social #networking
Just noticed that Google Translate translates the name of the Dutch social ne…
Company Policy or People #hr
I find a 400 plus page manual of office policies and job descriptions for eac…
Social Media Syndication – Feedback Loop
In the last two days I’ve not been posting so much, and focussing on up…
Google Scribe – Ye Shall Know Them By Their Fruits #google
I started playing with Google Scribe and wanted to see if patterns emerged so…
@Google, please stop with the language! #google
I have my Google account set up with English as the preferred language, my br…
Did The LinkedIn Certificate Expire Again? #linkedin
For the last 2 years LinkedIn has been running a bad poor IT management depar…
Advert: Reserve your Agile/SCRUM Pack #scrum #agile
When I just started I too had trouble with getting all the items I required t…
GMail Quota and Statistics (follow-up) #google #gmail #dashboard
On August 11th 2007 I exceeded my GMail quota, I blogged about it here. At th…
More SMS banking by M&T #sms #bank #risk
Brian Szymanski send a reply to me concerning another bank implementing SMS b…
Solving the URL shortening problem #twitter #tweet
I don’t understand why url expansion after url shortening is such an is…
Is RevTrax violating FaceBook privacy policy? #facebook @RevTrax #privacy
I just read an article Web Coupons Know Lots About You, and They Tell in the …
China acquires more than China… #hacks
This morning/night China’s networks were sending rerouting messages to …
Implementation of Security #risk
The lack of trained and experienced computer security people working in small…
ING reveals names using account numbers #bank #risk
Last week I saw an episode of a popular Dutch Ombudsman program Kassa, they r…
Musing: Why can I fly solo?
After seeing a program about a lifecoach trying to find the time to get his p…
Image source Radio Nederland Wereldomroep
@Google, please stop with the language! #google
I have my Google account set up with English as the preferred language, my browser sends the HTTP header message:
Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5So why do you keep shoving a language I do NOT choose in my face after I’ve asked you numerous times, and in numerous ways, not to. I thought computers listened to people, do you just program your computers to be stupid?
I know I’ve asked this many times, and every single time I’ve been ignored. Perhaps they will listen to me some day…
Just Finished Reading “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” #books
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
I thought the book was fun, it taught me a lot about where I make mistakes in punctuation. It should really be taught at school, I can’t remember ever being taught how to correctly use a semicolon or a dash. (Did you spot me split that infinitive? Hack!)
So how would you grade me? 
Technorati Tags: books, linguistics, punctuation, lynne, truss, english, language, style, writing
Just Finished Reading “Oxford Style Manual” ;) #books
To be honest I didn’t really read it, it’s just that this section of my blog is called “Just Finished Reading”.
I was really lucky finding The Oxford Style Manual
There are some online style guides available:
- The Economist Style Guide
- The Columbia Guide to Standard American English
- The Chicago Manual of Style Online
I never need to wonder whether I am using English with style.
Technorati Tags: english, language, style, writing, editing, books
Just Started Reading… #books
No, I haven’t finished Vurt! This book was pushed into my had today, and I needed to read something on the long train ride – which doesn’t explain today’s lack of entries. Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
Another book, in the same genre, which was given to me yesterday is Righting English that’s gone Dutch
Tomorrow I have a long train journey, perhaps I’ll have more time to read then.
Writing, Translating and Quotes
As I said previously I was getting into translation, I actually translated two documents yesterday. It was quite a challenge to correctly word something, keeping the spirit of the Dutch while writing coherent English. The guy who contracted me to work for him send me a number of links, and I found George Orwell’s six elementary rules (“Politics and the English Language”, 1946):
- Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
- Never use a long word where a short one will do.
- If it is possible to cut out a word, always cut it out.
- Never use the passive where you can use the active.
- Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
- Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
From: Economist.com
technorati tags: translation, work, business, dutch, english
Computer Aided Translator
As you may or may not know I like linguistics, I played with Word Sense Disambiguation using a number if the corpus’ available. I’m not a linguist, the closest is being touched by linguini. *pastafarians groan*
As of today I’m investigating adding another arrow to my bow, and because of this I’m learning about Computer Aided Translation tools. Soon I may become a part-time translator, from Dutch to English.
technorati tags: translation, business, dutch, english
UnTranslate with Van Dale
A friend of mine will soon be studying Dutch so she bought the Van Dale Nederlands Engels dictionary to look up Dutch words. Van Dale is comparable to the quality of the Oxford English Dictionary when it comes to Dutch. I naturally did what you usually do when you get a dictionary, I went to look up dirty words … they are in there.
I was however surprised to see that they don’t understand how dictionaries work, at least for non Dutch speakers. There are two translations which caught my eye: Hibiscus and Hoax. See the definitions below:
hibiscus – hibiscus
hoax – hoax
To further confirm, it’s not just in the H:
indiscreet – indiscreet
lotus – lotus
ohm – ohm
If the words are identical in both languages you would at least explain what it is. In the English – Dutch version the words are explained, with the exception of indiscreet. So I assume that they are specifically targeted at the Dutch speaking market, not at the English speaking one.
Defenestrate
Wow! I’m totally impressed, the English language is such a beautiful thing. Thanks to the webcartoon Questionable Content number 36 I learned the word defenestrate.
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