A curious phenomenon...

So I've got this Word document created by FineReader, see? And I do what I usually do to get a word count, see?

And I get a word count that's only slightly smaller than the number of characters in the file!

This cannot be, think I to myself, and prove it by highlighting a paragraph and getting roughly the same result (the word count approximates the character count).

I eventually solve the problem by changing the text font from Arial Unicode MS to just plain vanilla Arial, but if I create a new file and then format text using Arial Unicode MS, the word count is completely normal.

Apparently, whatever it was about the text that caused the problem with the word counting function got blitzed when I changed the font.

Mysteries will never cease, at least as long as I keep using computers.

Wandering in the wilderness...

Taking a crack at some language in a recently introduced draft law on the Russian Academy of Sciences, I find the following clause:

Российская академия наук представляет в органы государственной власти Российской Федерации результаты проводимой по их поручению экспертизы крупных научно-технических программ и проектов, а также мониторинга и оценки результативности деятельности государственных научных организаций независимо от их ведомственной принадлежности.

Running this thing through Google Translate is not too helpful:

Russian Academy of Sciences is the state authorities of the Russian Federation results conducted on their behalf to the examination of major research programs and projects, as well as monitoring and evaluation of the performance of public research organizations, regardless of their affiliation.

I'd do better with a literal word-for-word translation:

The Russian Academy of Sciences submits to government agencies of the Russian Federation the results of conducted-by-their-order expert reviews of major scientific and technical programs and projects, as well as of monitoring and evaluating the getting-results-quality of state scientific organizations regardless of their agency affiliation.

Better than GT, but still no cigar. Two things are clear, here. One is that—ignoring details for the moment—the RAS reviews scientific programs and tracks the performance of organizations at the request of various RF government agencies, and submits the results to those agencies. Two is that the source sentence is made particularly cumbersome by the adjectival "conducted-by-their-order" sitting in front of and describing those expert reviews and other activities that run on to the end of the sentence.

After some struggle, I end up with this:

The results of expert reviews of major scientific and technical programs and projects, and of monitoring and evaluating the performance of state scientific organizations regardless of their affiliation, carried out by order of Russian Federation government agencies, are submitted to said agencies by the Russian Academy of Sciences.

After a moment, it occurs to me there is something wrong with the sentence, besides just sounding awful (although the inherent prolixity of the source doesn't help from the get-go). The subject in this candidate translation is "results"; in the original, it's the "Russian Academy of Sciences."

So I go back and work at this some more. My usual approach, under such circumstances, is to try to break sentences like this into two, but that doesn't work here. Eventually, I come up with:

The Russian Academy of Sciences shall submit, to Russian Federation government agencies, the results of expert reviews of major scientific and technical programs and projects and of tracking and evaluating the performance of state scientific organizations regardless of their affiliation, carried out as ordered by said agencies.

Still not immortal prose, but it will have to do.

Yeao-za! Is it really after 6 pm?

Another half hour, and then I think I'll pack it up for the day.