标签: speech

I recently blogged about the worst oscilloscope manual of all time .. I've particularly enjoyed the feedback quoting from real-world manuals, such as "...the on-screen lathy rectangle shapes represent the front panel keys..." and "...turn the 'Universal' knob when holdoff time have been to max or min value, now the system will clew this information."   It's hard to argue with statements and instructions like this (how can you argue with something if you don’t know what it means?). And then another reader shared as follows:   I work in Switzerland and lately I've been dealing with a number of manuals/datasheets written by German companies. At first I despaired at understanding their statements and my coworkers asked me to stop my cursing, when I hit upon the secret. The trick is to read the manuals with English vocabulary but with the grammar rules of the original language! Now the sentences actually make a lot of sense. Of course, I don't speak Chinese or Japanese so most manuals still don't make sense but it's something...   In turn, this reminded me as to how different countries employ different writing styles in their English-language user manuals based on the rules of grammar associated with their native tongue.     In the case of user manuals written in English by native German speakers, for example, one tends to see things like "You will plug the probes into the analog inputs. Then you will set the vertical scale to the correct value. Then you will …" The reason I've put the "wills" in italics here is that recollect the emphasis in my German friends' voices when I've arrived at parties to be greeted with expressions like: "You have arrived! You will enjoy yourself!"   By comparison, I always find manuals written in English by the folks in Israel to have a very Shakespearian quality. You can almost read them like a play:   Character 1: "But where are the variables?" you ask. Character 2: "Ha! The variables are over here!" {Actor throws curtains apart to reveal the variables}   Some of the more interesting manuals I've run across in my time are those that have been created by Japanese and German companies working in concert to provide products to an English-speaking audience. The way this often works is that the native Japanese speakers in Japan create the first pass of the manual in German. Then they ship the product and the manual to their German counterparts, who proceed to translate the poor little scamp from Japanese-German into English.   How about you? Have you noticed any interesting "speech patterns" in manuals based on the grammar rules from their country of origin? Also, have you come across any multi-step translations like the "Japanese German English" path I discussed above?

Well, this may have nothing to do with electronics, but I'm about to put a smile on your face and make you a happier person, and that's got to count for something. I've mentioned my friend Arthur Smith in previous blogs. Arthur is one of the world's foremost authorities on cosmic rays. He currently resides deep in the English countryside where he devotes himself to keeping bees and making soap, but that's a story for another day. Every now and then I will receive an email from Arthur with a link to something interesting he's run across on the Internet. The topics of these emails are usually something to do with astrophysics or cosmology or something of that ilk, but every now and then he veers off into unknown territory. Arthur just sent me an email whose subject line was "Amazing Wedding Speech" with a link to a YouTube video . Now, generally speaking, I have to admit that I would rank "listening to wedding speeches" rather low on my list of "things I like to do." In fact, now I come to think about it, this activity wouldn't make it onto my list at all. If this email had come from anyone else... ...but it came from Arthur, so I clicked the link. The first thing I noticed was that this is a 14+ minute video! What? Seriously? You want me to watch a 14-minute video of someone giving a speech at a wedding. I was so flabbergasted that I forgot to click the "dismiss" icon, but by then it was too late, because I was captivated. The video starts with the groom, young Tom Fletcher, poised to give his speech. He commences by saying how uncomfortable he is at giving speeches, and then...   What can I say? I watched it all the way through. It's a real tear-jerker. All of the ladies in the audience end up crying. I had a speck of dust in my eye (that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it). All I can say is that I'm glad I'm already married, because young Tom would be an extremely hard act to follow!