Style Quiz - The Economist

The Economist has a quiz up at its site. I took it and got 9 out of 12. What does that mean? Well, this:



If you too want to take the quiz, click here.

 

Word Mutants

The Washington Post's Mensa Invitational had asked its readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition. I thought that was fun, so here's my attempt:

With a letter added

• prayfer: a prayer for the appearance of a specific object in the Christmas stocking


• compunter: a computer that helps you place bets on software-offshoring companies in yet-to-be-developing nations


• sufferling: a child of insufferable parents


• abstinthe: to abstain from drinking absinthe while reading Wodehouse


• extravagrant: to stay out of suitcases in the presidential suites of grand hotels


• celeberate: when clueless celebrities gather in a TV studio to berate the policies of the government

With a letter deleted

• banstand: a covered outdoor platform, across the busiest crossing of a city, where crowds gather for lighting candles to fight terrorism


• univerity: a college that preaches universal truths


• faceboo: to join a Facebook group created for taking potshots at a person, an object, or an idea

With a letter changed

• inferface: a biometric interface that has sensors to figure out if your face has the characteristics of a jihadi killer


• singelton: a gay singer


• designame: to create self-explanatory designations from proper nouns. For example, Chief Satyam Officer


• conpetition: a pre-judged competition on a TV reality show


• euphomia: the feeling of intense happiness experienced by a megalomoaniac

Of dots and curls - Comma blurb

There was this boy called Commah,
Who was so very prim and propah,
He'd never sit next,
To an uppercase text,
Unless it was a proper Nounah.

Money Matters (spot all nouns)

This blog post appeared in a slightly different form in TechCraft, a once-in-two-months e-zine distributed to the members of the yahoo group technical_writers_india. To subscribe to this group, send an email to technical_writers_india-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

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Money matters.
What does the phrase mean? Does it refer to the matters related to money (money, n.; matters, n)? Or does it mean that having some money really does matter (money, n.; matter, vb)? Is matter a noun or a verb?
Phrases such as these are potentially confusing, not only to readers in English but also to translators who translate such disjointed, disconnected phrases that appear in the user-assistance deliverables that we as techwriters create. In today's globalised economy, where the bigger of the multinational companies earn a significant portion of their revenue from outside their home country, we need to be careful about what we document. Why? Because, in all likelihood, what we document is going to be translated into 10 different languages, if not more. When we write in English, if we could keep the following points in mind, it makes life a lot simpler for translators. Trust me :) I used to handle localisation projects (before I decided that I'd rather write the very source that gets localised).

(1) Write short sentences

Writing short sentences is the equivalent of speaking slowly. A sentence that is long-winded has to be read more than once to be understood. A translator works under deadlines, and re-reading stuff takes away that much of the translator's time. Consider the following sentence:

The YST server ensures that all hosting servers of a YST product or service always sync with each other with respect to product versions of the services hosted by them.

Phew!

(2) Do not use compound nouns that have more than two words

Compound nouns with more than two words are potentially ambiguous (see the title of this post). Consider the following sentence:

The ABC file configuration program was not installed on this computer.

I can have the following three interpretations of this sentence:

• The configuration program of ABC file was not installed on this computer.
• The program of file configuration of ABC was not installed on this computer.
• The program, called ABC, of file configuration was not installed on this computer.

If clarity requires a few more words, use them. If you cannot avoid using three- or four-word noun phrases, use hyphenation to remove potential ambiguity. Consider the following revision:

The ABC file-configuration program was not installed on this computer.

Sounds better?

(3) Do not begin a heading with a verb

Consider the following sentence:

Print the Expense Summary

Are you telling a reader to go ahead and print the expense summary (in which case the heading's fine) or are you trying to tell a reader how to print an expense summary. If it's the latter, do add a "How to..." at the beginning of the heading - it orients the reader to your think-track.

Again, consider the following sentence:

Printing the Expense Summary

Do you mean that you (or the printer) is at this moment printing the expense summary or do you want to describe the process of printing the expense summary?

(4) Do not embed text in images

Else, it will take that much more time to do the following:

1. Extract the source text from the image.
2. Create a duplicate image minus the text.
3. Insert the translated text back into the image.

Or, if you cannot avoid doing so, be aware of the extra effort needed to localise the images.

(5) Do not expect the translators to be familiar with all sorts of content-authoring tools

You may have Vista-equipped workstations that run Structured FrameMaker, which integrates seamlessly into Webworks to produce beautifully compiled help-files. Your documents may be stored as XML modules. But do not expect all translators to have all the software that your company uses or to be familiar with XML and HTML tags. You have the following possible solutions:

• Send across the source text in a format that is editable by the majority (examples: Notepad, Word, Excel) and budget for the effort needed to rework the translation in the format that you want.
• Pay the translator for software that the translator may have to buy to cater to your special needs, and train the translator to use that software
• Look for a translator who can handle the file formats that you use.

Each of these options has a cost-time trade-off that you have to evaluate.

(6) Share your glossary with the translator

In other words, speak the same language. If you think that "trend graph" plots more than one Y against time X and your translator thinks that "trend graph" is a graph that shows the change of one Y against time X, then we are not speaking the same lingo.

Similarly, if you have a terminology in the target language, share it with the translator.

(7) Provide for text expansion and contraction

Be aware that translations to other languages may take up more space or less space than the source English text. Arrange your page layout and document layout to accommodate the variation. This may be important if your manual gets packed in the same carton as the software, and suddenly you find that the document is bulkier or larger than you what you planned.

The same holds true for UI elements. If you can have a say in the UI design, arrange the buttons and captions in such a manner that expansion and contraction of text is taken care of.

(8) Be available to answer queries

Make that extra effort to reach out to a team you've never seen, and probably never even spoken to. Your translators may be scattered over the globe, working in a time-zone different from yours, and they may not be subject matter experts. They may often stumble upon words and phrases that are not clear to them. Budget for time-zone differences and let the translators know when they can expect a response to their queries. Remember that translators are as much pressurised by deadlines as you are and their output is directly dependent on the feedback they get from you.

I am sure there are more points, but these are the ones that I think can take care of a lot many things.

To Hyphenate or No

I am helping a friend who wanted lessons in English grammar. i find the going rather tough (having slept through grammar classes in school).

Anyways, today, I wanted to send across an exercise in hyphenation and, not wanting to go back to real-life technical documents, I came up with the following:

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It was the twenty fifth of December, in the seventy third year of the reign of Kind Edgar, that the saviour was born. On that star studded night when the gentle shepherds were tending their sheep and when the blue jays had gone to sleep, a child was born to white faced Maria. While the sandal shod husband stood and looked, the hay filled manger lit up with the smile of the child. The smile went a skipping, broke into a thousand pieces and ascended the night sky to burn a golden coloured star. The wise men in the east, who had grown old, bearded and heavy hearted awaiting the birth of the saviour, saw the star and exclaimed, "Here comes the world saviour and the sin redeemer." And they ran towards the west. Little did they know that King Edgar had started a faith based census where every evil doer would be asked the following two questions: Is it self evident that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is the birth right of all human beings? Is it that all passwords to Hell should be case sensitive? All such evil doers who could not submit their responses in the government issued template were to be thrice whipped and twice drowned before being hanged on the cross till death.
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Am waiting to see what happens. I am not too sure about hyphens either....

 

Of dots and curls - Part 2

Colon, meanwhile, was unhappy. He liked introducing people to other people. So, he liked throwing parties. But, his last party had been a disaster. His cousins Period, Semicolon and Comma had absolutely refused to sit next to each other; Space had scandalised everyone by insisting on sitting next to EnDash; and the Uppercases had been a pain since they brought their lowercase legions with them and expected Colon to feed everyone. Now, Colon made all his money from introducing people to other people, and couldn't really afford to feed the two, or three, or more lowercase legions that Uppercases always turned up with. And, he couldn't stop the Uppercases from bringing in their legions because the senate had enacted the Drop Cap policy.

"I know what", though Colon as a sudden idea dawned on him. "I'll turn the legions against one another. They would keep banging against each other since I wouldn't invite Period, and since I would definitely not invite Bullet."

....

So it happened at Colon's next party. And the Uppercases stood gazing upon the carnage, sighing, and thinking, "Oh, what a tangled web we weave".

 

Of dots and curls - Part 1

Once upon a time, in a hut far into the woods, there lived a little boy called Comma. He had a curl in his cap, a spring in his step and a lot of envy for his two elder brothers. The eldest brother was called Period. He was ponderous and slow, and hated it when Comma ran in circles around him. Comma was jealous that Period always got the final word in any matter. And then, there was the middle brother, Semicolon. Since he hardly ever spoke unless spoken to, Semicolon gave out an air of profound thoughtfulness wherever he went. And that is what made Comma look upon Semicolon with a bit of awe. "Wow", he would tell himself. "He speaks rarely, but when he does, he can snap stuff into two. Without killing them off like Period does."

So what was it, actually, that Period did that annoyed Comma so? It was the fact that whenever Period said "Hey, here I come", things would stop. Immediately. People would have to begin afresh. Pick themselves up, don an upper case and continue. This was totally against Comma's firmly held belief - never make people change their cases unless they really really want to. Lower cases were lighter to lug around, and merged well with others. Upper cases? Well, now they were a different ballgame altogether - they towered over others, gave others an inferiority complex, and even sprouted shoots and leaves just for effect. No, upper cases were definitely not on the list of Comma's favourite things. The last time an upper case had stood next to Comma in the queue, it looked down its nose at Comma, sniggered, and said, "I represent Proper Noun".