4 ms·
"Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard." - David McCullough I agree with many of the other posts here. Some of the t
by scythmic_waves 5y ago
"Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard."
- David McCullough
I agree with many of the other posts here. Some of the translations highlighted in the article seem to either lose important information or introduce confusing information. The most striking example for me was the translation from
> A strong tremor in her hand makes it impossible for her to use American Sign Language.
to
> Her hand shakes so she does not do sign language.
I agree that "tremor" is an uncommon word and some of the adjectives like "strong", "impossible", and "American" are either superfluous or not strictly necessary. But in the translation, the phrase "hand shakes" coincides with an unrelated but very common thing: a "handshake". This gave me a slight pause when reading. And it's not like it's impossible to do sign language with shaky hands. In this case, it's the degree with which Kyra's hands shake that keeps her from doing sign language, something that is lost in the translation.
All this said, I want to stress that I agree with the premise of the article. We should value accessibility, and writing style is yet another vector that can exclude people. Quibbles about specific sentences shouldn't distract us from that. If anything, they and the lack of an effective algorithm to do this highlight how difficult the task is and probably always will be. Writing well is really, really hard. And the diversity of the audience for this kind of writing I think compounds that.
In fact, I might argue that writing plainly is harder. I think scientific/academic writing can often be considered lazy because it doesn't take the time to consider the audience. This isn't always true, but I think I'm not alone in having slogged through a paper or an article that could have used an editor. But it didn't get sufficient editing because, and again I stress, writing well is really, really hard.
- maaaaattttt 5y agoI'd like to add another citation from Nicolas Boileau (17th century) that my father used to tell me frequently: "Whatever is well conceived is clearly said, And the words to say it flow with ease." ("Ce que l'on conçoit bien s'énonce clairement, et les mots pour le dire arrivent aisément.") I think about it often especially when someone tries to explain something and it seems hard, very often this means it's also hard for them.
- chiefalchemist 5y agoBeing able to explain something (clearly) to someone else is a great way to measure your own understanding. The more complete your understanding, the better your ability to communicate it. (Yes, there are exceptions and outliers.)
- ebruchez 5y agoWe used to say it often in class, and we (or the teacher) would sometimes ironically trip on that very sentence :)
- pesfandiar 5y agoThe "hand shakes" vs. "handshakes" confusion is a known pattern that writers should typically avoid. It even has a name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-path_sentence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-path_sentence
- scythmic_waves 5y agoTIL! I bet I'll start seeing garden-path sentences all over the place now :)
- feoren 5y agoAgreed. I found the first sentence immediately understandable, and the second one confusing and ambiguous. > A strong tremor in her hand The fact that "tremor" is uncommon helped me instantly understand that this was a medical condition, and "strong" helped me understand that it's debilitating for her. It sounds long-lived, if not permanent. > Her hand shakes Ok ... is it a medical condition, or a nervous tick, or just a bad habit? Is it really strong or just a light, well, tremor? And of course as you pointed out, the confusion with with other words like "handshake", and the fact that "shakes" is transitive, so we could be about to read "Her hand shakes the salt shaker". "Tremor" is not transitive, so my mind doesn't need to leave open a branch that could accept another noun as part of it. > [condition] makes it impossible for her to ... Ok, her condition is really bad. We should not expect her to be able to lots of other things, either. Please don't ask her about it; it could be embarrassing. > [condition] so she does not do ... "so" should have a comma before it. "Her hand shakes so" is actually a complete sentence, which leaves room for "Her hand shakes so; she does not do" as being more separable thoughts rather than one being the consequence of the other. This is yet another possible "branch" of the sentence that my mind has to leave open while trying to understand it. She does not do it? That is so much more ambiguous than "it is impossible for her". The only possible improvement is the omission of the word "American", but that's not even clear: it gives us additional information about the subject (i.e., she is American) since it's already clear that any sign language would be hard for her.
- sandworm101 5y agoAnd dropping "american" both changes the meaning and reveals the mind of the translator. There are other sign languages, some perhaps easier for those with hand tremors. I think it safe to say that only a fellow american would drop that adjective to make the sentence more readable.
- reacweb 5y agoAs a non native english speaker, I can clearly understand the first sentence "A strong tremor in her hand makes it impossible for her to use American Sign Language". Even if we do not know the meaning of tremor (this french word is not used since long), we can easiliy guess that it is an illness in the hands and not lose much from the understanding of the sentence. For the second sentence, I have to think a lot more to understand the structure of the sentence and to remove the ambiguities. After reading the second sentence, I am far less confident in my understanding than afer reading the first one.