Never too rushed...

[alexpgp]

So there I am, looking at a label that says "спутники Марса" (literally, "satellites of Mars" or "Mars satellites"). This makes me think of the hardware we Earthlings have put into orbit around the Red Planet, and so, "Mars satellites" is what I typed.

But a look at the graphic on which this label appears shows two rocky lumps, which obviously are meant to represent the moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos.

And suddenly, I am fighting this urge to replace "Mars satellites" with "Moons of Barsoom" (or better yet, "Hurtling moons of Barsoom," except there's really no room in the space allowed) just to see if anyone notices, or at least gets the reference.

This post scratches the itch, if you get my drift, but hasn't done away with it entirely.

There are about 6,000 source words in the document, siad number not including a bunch of words that didn't get OCRed for one reason or another. What did make it through the OCR process are scattered over 80+ pseudo-PowerPoint slides, due COB tomorrow.

Ahem!

Comments

[Алекс Сойфер (from livejournal.com)]

спутник & satellite include both artificial and natural bodies, so there's nothing inherently wrong with the original text.

Of course you could opt for improvement of text clarity instead of precise translation and write "natural satellite" or "moon" :)

[alexpgp.livejournal.com]

I agree, there's certainly nothing wrong with the original, but I think there is a tendency in English to use "moon" predominantly in the context of a natural satellite, as it is both a one-syllable word (and humans will go to far lengths to conserve syllables) and quite unambiguous.

Thanks for the comment.

Cheers...