What one does with "experience"...
Apr. 3rd, 2002 06:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexpgpI've taken to spontaneously hugging Drew from time to time, because I love him and maybe, in some way, because I'm trying to make up for a perception on my part that I never hugged him enough when he was growing up.
As an afterthought, I asked him, "I don't make you uncomfortable when I hug you, do I?"
Without missing a beat and with a completely deadpan face, he replied, "I just hope you're not a Catholic priest."
I almost hurt myself laughing.
Well, at least he's getting news from somewhere.
* * * While not as far gone as one enthusiast I met via eBay a few years ago, I do like to acquire dictionaries and similar reference books. I figure that, eventually, I'll need them. Right now, for example, I'm translating something associated with the Centers for Disease Control and have been hauled out of a jam several times so far by Taber's Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary
One item I picked up at the ATA Conference last November was The BBI Dictionary of English Word Combinations. It's not your run-of-the-mill list of words.
In just about any language some words just "go together" (linguist-speak terms these "collocations"). In English, for example, one does not "perform" a crime, or "do" a crime, or "accomplish" a crime - the proper word is "commit." Write anything else in English, and the educated reader will notice. (The same "commit" applies to "suicide," although I've seen the use of suicide as a verb, e.g., "He suicided to avoid capture by the enemy," and it grates.)
Anyway, this little book came in handy a few weeks ago when I needed a verb to go along with "retribution," something that would describe having "gotten" some from someone. The dictionary suggested "to exact," which may be a little flowery, but did the job.
Just now, I needed to find a word that goes with "experience" and signifies the accumulation thereof ("accumulate" comes to mind only because the Russian word that goes with "experience" in my text - наколпенный - means to "accumulate," or "stockpile," or "build up"). The dictionary suggests "gain," "gather," and a few others, but my favorite is "acquire."
* * * There are times when I think, perhaps, that my mind is going because I can't recall such things on my own, but I really don't think that's the case. I think my difficulties lie with an increased blurring of the distinction between Russian and English in my mind... I'm finding myself sometimes expressing myself using words from one language, and sentence structure from another. How much of a difficulty this is remains to be seen.
In the meantime, I am 9 pages through the 20 for this job, for a brand-new client. Back to work!
Cheers...
As an afterthought, I asked him, "I don't make you uncomfortable when I hug you, do I?"
Without missing a beat and with a completely deadpan face, he replied, "I just hope you're not a Catholic priest."
I almost hurt myself laughing.
Well, at least he's getting news from somewhere.
One item I picked up at the ATA Conference last November was The BBI Dictionary of English Word Combinations. It's not your run-of-the-mill list of words.
In just about any language some words just "go together" (linguist-speak terms these "collocations"). In English, for example, one does not "perform" a crime, or "do" a crime, or "accomplish" a crime - the proper word is "commit." Write anything else in English, and the educated reader will notice. (The same "commit" applies to "suicide," although I've seen the use of suicide as a verb, e.g., "He suicided to avoid capture by the enemy," and it grates.)
Anyway, this little book came in handy a few weeks ago when I needed a verb to go along with "retribution," something that would describe having "gotten" some from someone. The dictionary suggested "to exact," which may be a little flowery, but did the job.
Just now, I needed to find a word that goes with "experience" and signifies the accumulation thereof ("accumulate" comes to mind only because the Russian word that goes with "experience" in my text - наколпенный - means to "accumulate," or "stockpile," or "build up"). The dictionary suggests "gain," "gather," and a few others, but my favorite is "acquire."
In the meantime, I am 9 pages through the 20 for this job, for a brand-new client. Back to work!
Cheers...
