language & communication – Page 30 – don't confuse the narrator

flobbalob, or words to that effect

According to the guide book I’m translating, the great Mosque-Cathedral in Córdoba boasts arcos polilobulados. Isn’t that a wonderful word? (Brits of a certain age will understand that it immediately made me think of Bill and Ben.)

Unfortunately, it’s the type of word that is liable to terrify a non-native reader: all those vowels, all those syllables… it must be complicated.

And, of course, it isn’t in the diccionario de la Real Academia, which makes it even more worrying.

This happens so often when you’re reading a foreign text: a word isn’t immediately obvious, so panic sets in.
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it’s all Greek to them

An interesting story on the BBC website under the headline Spanish hairdressers rebel against radio tax. It’s all to do with the fact that here in Spain the SGAE (Sociedad General de Autores y Editores) is determined to protect the intellectual property rights of its members.

The SGAE are the people responsible for the Canon por copia privada, a tax imposed on recording devices (both storage media, such as cds, and reproduction devices) in Spain.
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totally rad

Maybe it’s just me, but this headline, from the BBC website a few days ago, bothers me:

Plane bomb suspect "radicalised after leaving UK"

I think there are two problems. First the fact that “radicalised” could be either active or passive – “he radicalised”, or “he was radicalised”. And then the verb itself, “to radicalise”. It may be the correct usage, but it sounds strange. And it immediately makes me think of “free radicals”.
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military vices

We were talking about repairing a wooden trunk that we could use as a side table if it didn’t keep falling apart when it’s moved. I reckoned a dab of cola blanca around the dowels would do the trick when we put it back together again.

At which point my partner announced, “Creo que hay un sargento entre las herramientas en el invernadero.”

carpenter's bench vice & other tools — The tools are in the greenhouse

OK. We’ll gloss over the fact that we keep tools in the greenhouse – although this explains the slightly greenish tint to the photo – and focus on the “sargento”.

What was a sergeant doing with the tools, and what was his relevance to the simple repair we were about to undertake?
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the right word

Dr Oetker's silver balls — ballsing up the language

We were talking about traditional British celebratory cakes – proper rich fruit cakes with home-made almond paste, white royal icing and piped rosettes with silver dragées – and I was disappointed to find that confectionery suppliers in the UK are dumbing down: apparently they aren’t ‘dragées’ at all any more, but ‘silver balls’.

Why are we simplifying things when we have perfectly good and accurate words? A ‘silver ball’ could be any size and made of anything. A ‘silver dragée’ is far more precisely defined.
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