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Unloading... pardon my dust...
I figure if something remains a thorn in my side for several days, maybe I ought to exorcise it by writing about it. I've been able to successfully absorb a number of disappointments about the ProZ system of Kudoz, but a recent one sticks in my craw...
The asker was apparently dealing with a skin care catalog and wanted to know what "brouillé" means, as in the sentence:
Some doodah looks up the word in a dictionary and offers the following:
Who gets full marks for answering the question? Doodah.
I suppose I am being petty in writing about this at all, but on the other hand, I should probably be happy that this is the extent of what's been bugging me, translation-wise, for the past couple of days.
What I don't like, though, is the nagging thought that the ProZ system of awarding points can be easily manipulated by colluding parties. X and friend Y could agree to award each other Kudoz points for translation-related questions, yet still use proper answers proposed by respondents A, B, C, etc. in their translations.
(What I don't like about it is the fact that I'm allowing myself to be affected like this. I suppose it's the competitor in me... I've always been a little over-the-top when it comes to word-based games like charades, Botticelli, Pictionary, Taboo, etc.)
Hey, that reminds me... it's been ages since I've played Botticelli!
Cheers...
The asker was apparently dealing with a skin care catalog and wanted to know what "brouillé" means, as in the sentence:
Ma peau est plus luisante sur la partie mediane, son grain est plus serre sur les zones laterales. J'ai souvent le teint brouillé.I hopped onto the net and found matching pages at Lancôme (a cosmetics company). In the French version of their cosmetics FAQ, I found the following question:
Que faire quand j'ai le teint brouillé, les pores ouverts, une tendance aux points noirs?The same page in English offers the following question:
What should I do when my complexion is dull, my pores are dilated and I get black heads?After reading this and a couple more paragraphs, I am convinced that "un teint brouillé" is "a dull complexion." A Google search confirms the word pair is used a lot in the cosmetics field (at least 10 pages of "hits"). I submit an answer at the ProZ site, and include links to both pages.
Some doodah looks up the word in a dictionary and offers the following:
"How about 'irregular' or 'mottled' - these are the closest I could come up with for a term whose only definition I could find was 'scrambled' (but not in reference to cosmetics)."Number of Google hits for "irregular complexion"? Three.
Who gets full marks for answering the question? Doodah.
I suppose I am being petty in writing about this at all, but on the other hand, I should probably be happy that this is the extent of what's been bugging me, translation-wise, for the past couple of days.
What I don't like, though, is the nagging thought that the ProZ system of awarding points can be easily manipulated by colluding parties. X and friend Y could agree to award each other Kudoz points for translation-related questions, yet still use proper answers proposed by respondents A, B, C, etc. in their translations.
(What I don't like about it is the fact that I'm allowing myself to be affected like this. I suppose it's the competitor in me... I've always been a little over-the-top when it comes to word-based games like charades, Botticelli, Pictionary, Taboo, etc.)
Hey, that reminds me... it's been ages since I've played Botticelli!
Cheers...