language use & abuse – Page 6 – don't confuse the narrator

same difference

A couple of weeks ago I was asked to quote for a translation project that entailed translating a big corporate website from Spanish to English.

The potential job was passed on by a friend, so I didn’t know the client and they didn’t know me. We exchanged a few emails, in which I hope I came across as professional and experienced, and then I sent them a price per word (they’d agreed they could provide text documents) and a time frame.

I never heard back from them, so I suspect they chose a cheaper option with a shorter time estimate.
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gender agendas

I’ve mentioned to several people recently that I don’t seem to have many ideas for new writing, and although I know it’s only a small sample, their reactions seem to clearly support the idea that men and women use language for different purposes.

From the women there have been vague sympathetic noises, general clichéd reassurances that the tide’s bound to turn, and reminders that it’s not the first time I’ve complained of lack of ideas.

The men, though, have offered ‘solutions’.
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serious relations

I don’t have many relations. Certainly not many I am on speaking terms with. But some of those I do speak to, probably count as ‘serious’ people.

I was pleased, then, to find this advert brought up on my gmail account recently:

"verified ladies" for "serious relations"

I’m sure that if I were to want to give any of my serious relations an Asian beauty as a gift, they would rather the lady were verified than not.

But what should I get for the more light-hearted members of my family?

thank you for your feedback

Those who blog with WordPress will be used to the fact that each time you add a new post you get a post-published feedback page telling you how many posts you’ve made, how many words the latest one has, as well as suggesting tags, offering possible topics for the next post etc.

My previous post was greeted with this:

Wordpress post published feedback: "This is your 494th post. Bomb!"

I know it wasn’t the most inspired of the posts I’ve ever made, but I didn’t think it was so dreadful it deserved to be greeted with a bomb.
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from this week’s news

A couple of things that have caught my eye on the BBC website this week.

First, from the ‘most popular’ links, comes this:

Sadly, it doesn’t mean that having children can drive you to drink, which is what I imagined. It actually linked through to a story with the headline “Parenting style strongly affects drinking, Demos says”.

The second is from a story about UK social surveys and comes under the headline Why state surveys asked about bras and haddock.
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