[NTLK] Followup - Spanish translation of pda-soft: Looking for help

Lord Groundhog LordGroundhog at gmail.com
Wed Sep 29 19:23:39 EDT 2010


~~~ On 2010/09/29 21:58, Frank Gruendel at newtontalk at pda-soft.de wrote ~~~

> James answered...
> 
>> I'm going to go out on a limb here and speculate that, for Mr. Gruendel, good
>> enough....probably
> isn't good enough. :)
> 
> Hmm, smart thinking. What on earth did you conclude THAT from? It's true,
> though...
> 
> ... 

I wasn't going to get mixed up in this conversation, but this is becoming
painful so here I am.  Let's drop the euphemism "good enough" and the
self-mocking "perfectionism" and say what we mean here:  excellence.  And
let's stop apologizing for it.  Excellence is worth achieving and worth
defending without embarrassment.  And the fact that Frank wants to achieve
excellence is something to be encouraged.   :-)

The one thing that hasn't been mentioned specifically although it's been
hinted at is that Spanish, like most (all?) languages, is idiomatic.  Idioms
don't translate literally without risking a certain amount of unintentional
humour or just plain nonsense.  Even if a web-translator tells you the
literal meaning of a phrase, can you be sure it always will tell you what
that phrase conversationally?  And if it doesn't you won't necessarily
realize it because if you knew the language that well you wouldn't need the
translator would you?  Frank is right to hold out for human translation,
preferably by a native speaker or someone bringing more than book-Spanish to
the party.  

But to follow Frank's excellent example by not deviating from the subject, I
want to applaud him for wanting to pursue excellence.  We all prefer
excellence to mediocrity or just "good enough".   After all, excellence is
what set the Newton apart from everything else on the market when it came
out, and arguably, the Newton's lasting appeal is because the inbuilt
excellence of all those years ago means that it has qualities we can't find
in anything else.  

And that's my 2 tiny copper coins-worth in whatever failing currency takes
your fancy.  ;-)


 
Shalom. 
Christian 

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

³Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from a Newton.²
            -- what Arthur C. Clarke meant

http://youtube.com/watch?v=1ZzpdPJ7Zr4
(With thanks to Chod Lang)
http://tinyurl.com/29y2dl
http://www.diyplanner.com/node/3942


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