Oh, fluff!

It occurs to me, at the end of the most recent - and excessively long - Table from Hades, that all of the items stated as questions in Russian (предусмотрены ли..., применяются ли..., исключены ли..., and others) ought by rights be formulated as declarative sentences.

In other words, the translation shouldn't read "Are the contents of the tool kit properly labeled?" but "The contents of the tool kit are properly labeled."

This is especially the case because one of these interrogative forms - исключены ли... - is particularly hard to phrase as a question in English (particularly when the point is for "yes" to be the response that supports the goal of evaluating a design). For example:

Исключена ли из алгоритма деятельности оператора необходимость сохранения в памяти временного интервалов?

The slight change in spelling (исключена instead of исключены) is due to the difference between plural and singular forms of the word. There is an additional nit to pick: the adjective "временного" stands ready to modify a singular masculine noun, but the intended noun (интервал) is rendered in the plural. (Oh, joy!) In this situation, I am going to let the noun "control" the translation and add a footnote to the translation.

My first try:

Is the need to retain time intervals in memory excluded from the operator activity algorithm?

This, at least, is semi-coherent; other examples wouldn't be comprehensible in English under torture or the aid of machine tools. My revised rendering:

The operator activity algorithm does not require retention of time intervals in memory.

I like the latter much better.

While this small epiphany required a half an hour of time to go back and fix everything, the resulting product is much improved.

I am halfway through the swamp, with eyes ever turned toward St. Jerome.

Cheers...

Thoughts on books...

I was initially miffed that I had bought the most recent Chicago Manual of Style when there was an ostensibly searchable online edition available, but over the course of the first few days of my free 30-day trial of the online version, I'm finding it's just about as much work to use the searchable edition as it is to use the dead tree edition. (And the last time I checked, the book won't go "poof" after a year, whereas a $35 online subscription will have run out.)

Apropos of which, there are rumors afoot that ebook publishers (Amazon is often mentioned) will start putting ads in ebooks. Actually, ads have already been appearing in books, of both the dead tree and electronic variety, for some time. Some have just been less intrusive than others.

Going back before I was born, some of my late mother's Modern Library books have dust jackets that were also cleverly designed catalogs of other books you could order directly from the publisher. More recently, but still quite some time ago, I recall books, almost exclusively paperbacks, that had a card bound in the center. These were typically postcards with a pitch for this or that, which you could fill out and mail at no cost if the pitch appealed to you. (I seem to recall a card of this kind bound into Ayn Rand's Virtue of Selfishness, advertising whatever Objectivist periodical she was publishing at the time.)

More generally, ever since I can remember, many fiction paperbacks have had ads printed on the last few pages, advertising other books, generally by the same author but not always or exclusively. Most recently, I've noticed the ad-that's-not-an-ad, where a book will include the first chapter of the author's next book as a teaser (works by Lee Childs and the late Robert B. Parker come to mind here). I will freely admit that such offerings have been successful in diverting cash from my wallet into the coffers of book publishers.

I would hate for ebook publishers to get crazy with advertising, the way some DVDs do when they won't let you skip the seemingly endless progression of trailers for other movies before displaying the menu for the main feature or the way some web sites have with ads that pop up in the middle of the screen and require you to wrestle them into the proverbial bit-bucket. However, I suspect that such efforts will not be very successful (at least, not until the public has been trained to accept it, which hopefully won't occur for a good long time).

* * *I finished the 10K-word translation late in the afternoon and have managed to edit almost 5,000 words of The Big Edit™. It's been a good day's work, and I'm just grateful my eyeballs haven't packed their gym bags and run away. It's time to give them a rest.

Cheers...