![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
One of those "what's the difference" days?
Jan. 7th, 2013 11:55 amAs in, "what's the difference between [something] and [something else]?"
In my line of work, I sometimes find myself wondering about the words that I use to earn my bread. This interest was probably inspired by a rather embarrassing failure of mine, which occurred when I was in my twenties.
The year was 1977, if memory serves, and the news that Galina had managed to get a temporary visa to come visit me in the U.S. spurred me to go find a real job. (I had spent several months trying to get work as a photographer, but in retrospect, with what passed for my personal marketing skill set at the time, I would have had a better chance of dropping a ping-pong ball into a shot glass from the top of the Empire State Building in a howling gale, but I digress...)
So I started interviewing, with no success, and eventually ended up interviewing for an editorial position at Macmillan, which at the time was publishing a translation of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia. As turned out to be common for such positions, I had to take a test that was designed to screen out applicants whose skills in grammar and usage were not up to snuff.
Confident in my own English skills, I really didn't pay all that much attention to what I was doing, and as a result, I failed the test.
Boy, was that ever a wakeup call!
The next time I took such a test—at Plenum Publishing Corporation—I very much did pay attention, and as it happens, I aced the test and got the job. Subsequently, in connection with my position as production editor, I devoured books on grammar and usage, including everything I could find by Theodore Bernstein. Eventually, I became one of those obnoxious grammar mavens who delighted in pointing out, to one and all, the difference between, say, "I feel nauseous" and "I feel nauseated."
While I am still aware of such differences, and have definite opinions as to which word or phrase is to be used where, I have long ago lost that missionary zeal to "show a fellow-savage how to work." I have enough problems of my own, and stuff like that just ain't in my job description, y'dig?
And yet, from time to time, I am forced to wonder, "what's the difference between...," as I did this morning, twice, within about five minutes.
The first had to do with the difference between "judicial" and "juridical" (which I still do not understand, but—hooray!—there is no immediate need for me to do so, so I will simply push it on the stack), and the second had to do with the difference between the Russian words винт and шуруп.
The dictionary really doesn't help in this latter case, because in informal, day-to-day speech, винт and шуруп are often used interchangeably to mean "screw" (describing—ahem—a type of fastener). A search of the Web, however, turned up an interesting YouTube video (in Russian, naturally) that purports to explain the difference not only between a винт (which I eventually translated as "machine screw") and шуруп ("wood screw"), but also болт ("bolt"). The comments to the video were also instructive, sort of, because everyone pretty much disagreed with both what was said in the video and with all the other commenters.
In the end, I am confident my translation will serve until something else better comes along.
Cheers...
UDATE: It must be my day for this kind of thing. I am now trying to get a handle on the difference between "stochastic" and "probabilistic." Yikes!
In my line of work, I sometimes find myself wondering about the words that I use to earn my bread. This interest was probably inspired by a rather embarrassing failure of mine, which occurred when I was in my twenties.
The year was 1977, if memory serves, and the news that Galina had managed to get a temporary visa to come visit me in the U.S. spurred me to go find a real job. (I had spent several months trying to get work as a photographer, but in retrospect, with what passed for my personal marketing skill set at the time, I would have had a better chance of dropping a ping-pong ball into a shot glass from the top of the Empire State Building in a howling gale, but I digress...)
So I started interviewing, with no success, and eventually ended up interviewing for an editorial position at Macmillan, which at the time was publishing a translation of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia. As turned out to be common for such positions, I had to take a test that was designed to screen out applicants whose skills in grammar and usage were not up to snuff.
Confident in my own English skills, I really didn't pay all that much attention to what I was doing, and as a result, I failed the test.
Boy, was that ever a wakeup call!
The next time I took such a test—at Plenum Publishing Corporation—I very much did pay attention, and as it happens, I aced the test and got the job. Subsequently, in connection with my position as production editor, I devoured books on grammar and usage, including everything I could find by Theodore Bernstein. Eventually, I became one of those obnoxious grammar mavens who delighted in pointing out, to one and all, the difference between, say, "I feel nauseous" and "I feel nauseated."
While I am still aware of such differences, and have definite opinions as to which word or phrase is to be used where, I have long ago lost that missionary zeal to "show a fellow-savage how to work." I have enough problems of my own, and stuff like that just ain't in my job description, y'dig?
And yet, from time to time, I am forced to wonder, "what's the difference between...," as I did this morning, twice, within about five minutes.
The first had to do with the difference between "judicial" and "juridical" (which I still do not understand, but—hooray!—there is no immediate need for me to do so, so I will simply push it on the stack), and the second had to do with the difference between the Russian words винт and шуруп.
The dictionary really doesn't help in this latter case, because in informal, day-to-day speech, винт and шуруп are often used interchangeably to mean "screw" (describing—ahem—a type of fastener). A search of the Web, however, turned up an interesting YouTube video (in Russian, naturally) that purports to explain the difference not only between a винт (which I eventually translated as "machine screw") and шуруп ("wood screw"), but also болт ("bolt"). The comments to the video were also instructive, sort of, because everyone pretty much disagreed with both what was said in the video and with all the other commenters.
In the end, I am confident my translation will serve until something else better comes along.
Cheers...
UDATE: It must be my day for this kind of thing. I am now trying to get a handle on the difference between "stochastic" and "probabilistic." Yikes!
