3 ms·

It's confusing because passive voice is used.

by tantalor 6y ago

Tomte 6y ago
No, it's confusing, because the sentence (which isn't actually in the passive voice) is word-by-word identical to another sentence, but with with a totally different meaning. So that many people will parse it as the other sentence. (The German sentence doesn't have that ambiguity)
- imagine99 6y ago
  I believe whoever changed the headline to this abomination doesn't understand any German - or it was done automatically by something like GPT-3 (wouldn't put it past HN ;-)). Why? Because it's the exact result that Google Translator spits out if you translate the original page in Chrome ("Google no longer wanted to sponsor the AI ethics conference"). That's of course just plain incorrect on several levels. I put a lot of effort into finding a suitable and exact translation when I originally submitted it but apparently we are now at the point where well-thought-through and correct work can simply be erased and overwritten with the result of a stupid Google AI. How fitting for this topic ;-))
  - hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
    It's not really "incorrect", it's just ambiguous to the point that an average native English speaker would interpret it incorrectly. The problem is the word "wanted" in that sentence can either signify present tense passive voice (e.g. "Google (is) no longer wanted to sponsor..."), which is actually the desired interpretation here, or past tense active voice (which is how I think most native speakers would interpret it).
    - schoen 6y ago
      In particular, the passive interpretation (omitting "is") is only valid in headlinese, while the active interpretation is valid in ordinary English. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headline#Headlinese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headline#Headlinese Many English speakers understand headlinese easily, but maybe not so easily when there's a more natural non-headlinese parse of the same phrase!

3 ms·

It's confusing because passive voice is used.

by tantalor 6y ago

It's confusing because passive voice is used.

Tomte 6y ago
No, it's confusing, because the sentence (which isn't actually in the passive voice) is word-by-word identical to another sentence, but with with a totally different meaning. So that many people will parse it as the other sentence. (The German sentence doesn't have that ambiguity)
- imagine99 6y ago
  I believe whoever changed the headline to this abomination doesn't understand any German - or it was done automatically by something like GPT-3 (wouldn't put it past HN ;-)). Why? Because it's the exact result that Google Translator spits out if you translate the original page in Chrome ("Google no longer wanted to sponsor the AI ethics conference"). That's of course just plain incorrect on several levels. I put a lot of effort into finding a suitable and exact translation when I originally submitted it but apparently we are now at the point where well-thought-through and correct work can simply be erased and overwritten with the result of a stupid Google AI. How fitting for this topic ;-))
  - hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
    It's not really "incorrect", it's just ambiguous to the point that an average native English speaker would interpret it incorrectly. The problem is the word "wanted" in that sentence can either signify present tense passive voice (e.g. "Google (is) no longer wanted to sponsor..."), which is actually the desired interpretation here, or past tense active voice (which is how I think most native speakers would interpret it).
    - schoen 6y ago
      In particular, the passive interpretation (omitting "is") is only valid in headlinese, while the active interpretation is valid in ordinary English. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headline#Headlinese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headline#Headlinese Many English speakers understand headlinese easily, but maybe not so easily when there's a more natural non-headlinese parse of the same phrase!