Via Random Neural Misfirings: a New York Times article (free registration required) reports that Deloitte Consulting has developed a program that recognizes jargon in documents. It’s intended to help people write better business English. The program is called Bullfighter. It works like a spellchecker in word processing programs to spot words regarded as jargon. Continue reading
Via Random Neural Misfirings: a New York Times article (free registration required) reports that Deloitte Consulting has developed a program that recognizes jargon in documents. It’s intended to help people write better business English. The program is called Bullfighter. It works like a spellchecker in word processing programs to spot words regarded as jargon. Continue reading
Tom Watson, Labour MP, in his blog, points out what happens when the British energy company Powergen gets a URL for its Italian operations: www.powergenitalia.com.
Via advobLAWg, another German lawyer’s weblog (by Michael Heng), the Chamber of Industry and Commerce at Frankfurt has materials (in German) on the proposed reform of the law of unfair competition. What is particularly interesting is a PDF file containing a contrastive synopsis of old and draft new law, together with what is known as the ‘professors’ draft’. There is also an explanatory introduction to this. Continue reading
Via Patterico’s Pontifications, a man in Santa Cruz succeeded in getting damages at small claims court against American Airlines when he traced the plane that had dropped two large lumps what is euphemistically called blue ice (why blue?) onto the skylight of his boat. Continue reading
This follows on from Clarity, but I am putting it in a separate entry for once.
The EU translation service has an initiative called Fight the Fog, trying to encourage the writing of comprehensible documents. I must admit that although I’ve enjoyed listening to Emma Wagner talking about this, I have never found any direct help from it for myself. They do have a very nice list called Le mot juste, of French words often mistranslated in EU usage. Continue reading