Language Overflow

Jim Reynolds

04:48

"BERNIE & HILLARY" — A Bad Lip Reading

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Damkerng T.

07:11

@JimReynolds LOL -- That makes me wonder about the original words!

CowperKettle

08:05

> "to take a French leave" (to depart a party or other gathering without taking polite leave of one's host) is referenced in French as filer à l'anglaise (lit. "flee English-style").

Damkerng T.

@CowperKettle That would make the rest of us wonder which came first!

Welcome to the room, @LeoHzs!

Good evening, @snailplane!

Anonymous

08:20

Good evening! :-)

Damkerng T.

How are things going over there? :-)

Anonymous

08:46

@DamkerngT. Not too much going on.

Anonymous

The hamsters are doing well :-)

Damkerng T.

@snailplane I hope your snails are doing well, too. :-)

Sorry for the delay, I'm sure why my computer chose to run system protection processes around this time.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Uh-huh! Zeta is getting big :-)

Damkerng T.

A coin's size yet?

Anonymous

Not quite!

CowperKettle

08:59

Good afternoon, Snaily!

@DamkerngT. In Russian, it is "leave English-style", but this is clearly derived from French, since French was predominant in Russian upper circles in ealry XIX century.

Anonymous

But Zeta was a very tiny baby when she hatched :-)

Damkerng T.

I guess she'll be as big as a coin soon!

CowperKettle

It takes a lot of sitting getting snails to hatch. (0:

Or maybe they hatch without external warming

@V.V. That reminded me

wait for the other shoe to drop

Verb: wait for the other shoe to drop

(idiomatic) To defer action or decision until another matter is finished or resolved.
(idiomatic) To await a seemingly inevitable event, especially one that is not desirable.
1969, "Golf: The Confidence Man," Time, 29 Aug.:
After the tournament, Player admitted that all through the final round he had been nervously waiting for more trouble. "It was like waiting for the other shoe to drop."

An Internet meme of the pre-Internet era

CowperKettle

09:23

I finished a 200-page translation O_o

Hatched it, so to speak. It will be as big as a coin only in a month's time, when the company transmits the money.

BBL

Damkerng T.

09:39

Ka-ching, ka-ching!

Jim Reynolds

09:55

0

Q: Don't be abrasive

Does the following sentence sound natural to you when you are going to prevent somebody from insulting: Don't be abrasive. I know other alternatives and I just need to know if this sentence sounds idiomatic and normal in this sense or not.

Closed as "proofreading* and basic reference.

The question is whether the expression is natural

Is it a good/on-topic/valid question?

I don't know if I want to try to reopen it, or decide not to care

Damkerng T.

> I know other alternatives and I just need to know if this sentence sounds idiomatic and normal in this sense or not.

I'd say it carries a strong quality of proofreading.

"I know what I can use. I don't have any problem using other alternatives, which I know how to use. I just want someone to approve this sentence I just made. Is it natural?"

On the other hand, we can argue for it that the OP's point of concern is clear, i.e., "Does the following sentence sound natural to you when you are going to prevent somebody from insulting: Don't be abrasive."

In any case, I wouldn't use "Don't be abrasive" in such a situation, and I doubt if anyone will use it.

But we can't mention any other alternatives (the OP prohibits us), so what else can we do?

On top of that, I'm not really sure if the kind of situation I'm thinking about is the same as his "when you are going to prevent somebody from insulting".

Preventing who? From insulting whom?

Jim Reynolds

10:19

I think the OP understands the meaning of abrasive and knows some synonyms. They have a particular concern over where the expression as a whole is idiomatic, natural, or strange.

Damkerng T.

@JimReynolds I think it's likely that his use case or use cases aren't real.

Jim Reynolds

Suppose your close friend or family member tends to unintentionally be abrasive. They know it, you know it. They are on their way to an important social event. You might give them this caring bit of advice in a playful way.

Jim starts writing in chat ...

Damkerng T.

So our answers would be like telling him "Could you please behave yourself?" sounds natural if he asked whether it sounds natural or not.

Jim Reynolds

Or simply We can/do say that. It's not awkward or strange.

Like Jim starts to try to be funny in here. Dam sees something coming that might be offensive. The robot might remind Jim to avoid doing something that he's wont to do.

Damkerng T.

@JimReynolds Of course, it's a perfectly grammatical sentence or utterance, but that doesn't mean that it's useful (actually, I think our answers could be harmful, even) to other learners.

No clear use case, how would our learners use it?

Jim Reynolds

10:28

It's not a useful way to tell someone not to be abrasive?

Damkerng T.

@JimReynolds It's not useful to tell learners that "Don't be abrasive" is idiomatic and is appropriate "when you are going to prevent somebody from insulting", IMHO.

Jim Reynolds

I think he means this: I know what abrasive means. Something like insulting. But I don't know if the text is something normal to say.

Damkerng T.

Of course, we can improve our answers by adding use cases, more details, and so on. But one thing which make me not want to reopen this question is because, if we show that we're okay with this question, we can expect to see a lot more of this kind of question come.

@JimReynolds I agree. I think he thinks more or less like that.

Jim Reynolds

What comes into my mind is the feeling that snailplane often says things in here like Sounds fine to me.

Damkerng T.

I have no problem answering or with anyone answering this kind of question in chat, but I don't feel as comfortable on the main site, personally.

Jim Reynolds

10:33

Right. But my perspective is, What's wrong with this kind of question?

Damkerng T.

@JimReynolds It lacks research. Its use case is not real. It doesn't seek the best choice in a given situation. It simply asks yes or no.

Jim Reynolds

I think the OP tries to describe the situation. They want to use it to prevent someone from insulting people. I think, in other words, they are trying to show that they know what abrasive means.

Damkerng T.

Maybe I read the question differently because I know what he's doing.

Jim Reynolds

?

What is he doing?

Damkerng T.

Ah, he just added something to the question.

@JimReynolds What if someone is going to write a book and in the book, among other possible phrases under "When you want to prevent somebody from insulting:" is Don't be abrasive.

I don't mind if anyone will write a book or publish anything based on information on our site, but personally, I think it could be harmful to other learners who read that. And when I think about our site, I ask myself, do I want to see more like this? In this case, my answer is no.

It's just my opinion, anyway, though.

Jim Reynolds

10:41

Hmm... how harmful? I'm not challenging you.

Damkerng T.

@JimReynolds A book should be written by someone who knows through and through of what he's writing or going to write, right?

Jim Reynolds

The two terms are not identical.

Damkerng T.

I think we have many examples, even on our site, that someone quoting something and writing an answer based on that, and as it turns out, misleads the reader.

Jim Reynolds

Compare to If someone's going to say something, they should know through and through what they are going to say.

Oh, I think I see...

Damkerng T.

Let's say, a learner see an ELL question, and they think to themselves, A-ha! I think this can be answered by a dictionary, so they look it up, quote some entries they think relevant, and write up an answer, probably get lots of votes, but turns out the answer they write is wrong.

Jim Reynolds

10:45

I'm going to use this site to help me execute a professional project, asking a million questions?

Damkerng T.

@JimReynolds It's actually fine with me, but only when I think the question/answer is useful to other learners.

Jim Reynolds

I was going to suggest he look up the word in a number of dictionaries and see what he can glean from the example usages.

Also to search for the string in quotes.

Damkerng T.

@JimReynolds If I'm not mistaken, he's gleaned quite a lot from dictionaries, but I'm not very sure.

Jim Reynolds

I can see asking that of an OP.

That each question should contribute to a library of answers likely to be useful to many learners is an interesting issue.

I don't think we apply that measure to many, many questions.

But ... if I really care about such things, I'd spend more time on meta, etc.

And I'm not motivated to do so.

Damkerng T.

@JimReynolds Judging from the amount of votes I've cast, I think it's fair if I claim that there are good chances that at least I'll be a second learner who read any given ELL question. :-)

Jim Reynolds

10:52

It's hard to say that the question and answer won't be useful .... right!

Damkerng T.

So, say, about one-third of all ELL questions, there are at least two learners who'll read them! (Me and the OP :-)

Jim Reynolds

Ha. Interesting.

I wonder how many others just browse questions and answers.

Damkerng T.

nods -- When I see something like "viewed 12 times", I wonder if it's only me and the OP!

Jim Reynolds

All the while, improving their English by incidental as well as "direct factual" learning.

Where is the viewed stat?

Damkerng T.

And I don't read our posts as many and as intensely as I used to.

Jim Reynolds

10:55

O.O

I think your purposes are better served in here. Relatively better.

Damkerng T.

Here, here!

:D

Jim Reynolds

Hmm. Of course "viewed" doesn't mean "read." And by how many wondering if they can answer vs learn the answer.

Damkerng T.

nods

@JimReynolds But, practically, we can assume that "read" won't exceed "viewed".

@Max Couldn't an excellent answer be quite expansive, elaborating on some other examples of how Don't be (adj/complement) commonly function, how abrasive is commonly used, and contexts in which the expression might be commonly used? — Jim Reynolds 49 mins ago

Actually, I think it could!

Then again, such things didn't happen before you posted that comment.

I think the OP's edit makes it worth it to reopen the question now. What do you guys think?

Aww... (just saw Max's comments when refreshing the page). Hope @Jim won't be sulking. Lots of direct opinions are around today, but we all are here to help our learners! (And learn English!)

Jim Reynolds

11:23

Why sulk when one can stick pins in a voodoo avatar?

Damkerng T.

@JimReynolds Argh! That's scary!

Jim Reynolds

Haha. Voodo robots, on the other hand, hard to pierce with pins.

Errr. I would imagine!

@DamkerngT. Don't ignore telepaths.

Damkerng T.

@JimReynolds LOL

Jim Reynolds

Now I think the question is unclear

Damkerng T.

Interesting!

Jim Reynolds

11:30

Abrasive would more often refer to a personal characteristic.

Damkerng T.

nods -- That's why I don't think a question was good when its use case was unclear.

Jim Reynolds

Insulting relatively more often to an act that is intentionally designed to denigrate.

There seemed to me reason to guess that the OP understood the meanings

It's not natural for me to be mistaken.

@Dam Thanks for the discussion

Damkerng T.

@JimReynolds No, thank you, and your answer!

Spamalot - Song that Goes Like This

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A bit old, but still much fun!

> Now we're into E
That's awfully high for me
But everyone can see
We should have stayed in D
For this is our song that goes like this

:D

1

Q: What does "parsimonious summary" mean?

Excerpted from the paper How the Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction, not Engaged Argument by Gary King Section 8 discusses the theoretical implications of our findings. We give a unified parsimonious summary of Chinese government internal information co...

word-meaning phrase

Hmm... this parsimonious is strange.

It reads like Chinese or Thai rather than English!

> With saints, Dante is apathetic. They are written with a dry pen, and parsimonious vision. —Robert Lowell, Collected Prose, 1987

Maybe it was meant for "restricted"!

0

Q: What does this sentence mean, regarding the usage of the word subject

"Subject to you meeting any outstanding non-academic conditions." Can someone rewrite this sentence so that I can better understand, especially the usage of the word subject in this case.

meaning

My first thought: Is it Subject to you meeting or Subject to your meeting?!

Maybe both are correct.

CowperKettle

12:43

I wonder if there's a specialized program that allows an easy replacement of legends in charts (in the png format, say).

I'm using PAINT.NET.

I have to select the existing line of legend in Russian, delete it, then fill in the void using the bucket tool (with white) and then print the translation in its place.

There should be a way to do that quicker.

Some software that automatically detects text on the chart, puts rectangles round it so that you can quickly delete it, automatically fills in the space with background color..

Damkerng T.

13:07

@CowperKettle I know ffmpeg can do that but to a video frame.

A quick search for a similar idea but for images landed me on im.snibgo.com/fillholes.htm

(I guess you have to tell it where the texts are anyway.)

Looks like you have to compile his process modules. It may be plausible on Linux.

In any case, if your images are not too challenging, I may have a solution for you by using just vanilla ImageMagick. Just upload a sample here and let me see if my quick and dirty solution will work well.

CowperKettle

Thank you, I'll try to read up on ImageMagick! Thus far it looks like a lot of dense tech jargon there. I have a non-disclosure agreement, so I'd better not upload any images where anyone can see them.

I'll translate stuff using the unwieldy tables below the images for now.

Damkerng T.

Okay! :D

CowperKettle

Oh.

I've got in idea. I'll try to use FineReader to recognise the text on images, maybe it allows an easy editing and merging of the result into a png.

Damkerng T.

Maybe! I don't know if FineReader can do that, though. :D

Jim Reynolds

13:33

@DamkerngT. See sense 2 here

ahdictionary.com/word/…

It's closer.

I'm surprised that the first few dictionaries only gave the "stingy/frugal" sense.

CowperKettle

@DamkerngT. Well, FineReader can find the texts itself. It would be a chore to indicate the coordinates of all the textual inclusions in the chart, since each chart is different.

I wonder how to use regular expressions to replace the line of the kind 14.04.15 with a line of the kind 14-Apr-2015

Damkerng T.

Two regsubs, maybe.

Oh, one is enough.

CowperKettle

I may need to bulk-replace a lot of such lines, since the Russian date format is misunderstood by non-Russians..

Damkerng T.

s/\.04\./-Apr-/

@JimReynolds Thanks!

CowperKettle

Trados has two windows: "Find" and "Replace", and allows using regular expressions.

@DamkerngT. Is this for the "Find" or for the "Replace" window? O_o

Jim Reynolds

13:38

It can mean sparing more generally, and academics will value the more parsimonious of competing theories that can account for observations.

CowperKettle

What if the months is different from April?

Damkerng T.

@CowperKettle Ah, Word, you mean? I haven't use Word for so long, but this is in a general syntax of regular expressions.

@CowperKettle You've gotta do it 12 times, then! :D

CowperKettle

No, Trados is a translation software.

12 times! I thought there was a way to list "if-thens" (0:

Damkerng T.

@CowperKettle No, regex has no if.

CowperKettle

I should then dust off my textbooks on Visual Basic and write an app for Word.

Damkerng T.

13:40

I suppose that in some extended versions of it, we could do a hack that may replace all months in a single blow, but I'm not sure about Trados.

CowperKettle

nods

Damkerng T.

@JimReynolds I take it that this usage is common enough, then.

Strange that sometimes figurative expressions are accidentally similar across languages.

CowperKettle

> Trados has two windows: "Find" and "Replace", and allows using regular expressions. (Is this "allows using" also wrong, and should it be "allows the use" too?)

Jim Reynolds

13:56

@DamkerngT. Yes. Most American middle or high school students will see textbooks listing 4 (5, 6) criteria for evaluating scientific theories with parsimonious being one.

CowperKettle

> We need to make a tie-in in the purified water loop in order to set up an additional draw-off point in room 2. (I wonder if this "draw-off" is okay)

The meaning is, room 2 will get some purified water from the system.

The Russian original says "There is a need for a tie-in" (but the meaning is "it should be done") but I think "We need" makes it livelier.

There's this stock Russian expression, "Research and Production Building", that urges me to adjust it to "R&D Building".

There's no short alternative in English.

Such a building is used for developing new technologies, for research, but also for producing pilot batches of a drug/ a machine/ a plastic/ a anything else.

user62015

14:12

@DamkerngT. Hi a quick question, which one is good to go Grammatical knowledge or Grammar knowledge? Thanks

CowperKettle

Grammar knowledge

Beatles Festival in Uralmash, Yekaterinburg - right now. I forgot about it. Should have visited it.

Damkerng T.

@user62015 nods -- What CowperKettle said. :D

@CowperKettle Oh!

user62015

@DamkerngT. @CowperKettle Thanks.

CowperKettle

@DamkerngT. Different local groups performing Beatles songs. But the festival will end in 40 minutes.

Or "ends in 40 minutes".

Uralmash is short for "Ural Machinery". A huge industrial district built in 1929-1930

Dangerous to walk around in the evenings. ^_^

Damkerng T.

o_O!

CowperKettle

14:32

Maybe not that dangerous, but I never tried.

DEAD

Still 8 candidates/

Why didn't Snail run/

Anonymous

@DEAD I'm still thinking about it :-)

CowperKettle

@DEAD Because snails don't run

Running is an ungraceful mode of locomotion for a snail.

DEAD

Why, shift key/ q-q

@CowperKettle Are you sure about that

Have you ever seen evidence of snails not running

CowperKettle

Can I say "sampling point" when the room will be not just sampling but using the water from the purified water pipeline?

@DEAD I see it now: Snails is not running for a mod.

Touche!

DEAD

14:38

Slaps Cowp

50

Q: Did Hillary Clinton refuse to designate Boko Haram a terrorist organisation when the FBI, CIA and the Justice Department asked?

Tera Dahl at Breitbart writes: As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton refused to designate Islamic State affiliate Boko Haram in Nigeria, which was named the deadliest terrorist organization in 2015, a terrorist group. She not only refused, but she hindered the efforts of Members of Congress ...

politics hillary-clinton

When will the frigging election be over so we won't see BS like this again . . .

CowperKettle

Phew.

I won't even open that question to read.

Better spend time on reading about Gibbs' free energy than on this.

The last US president I liked was Bill Clinton.

George Bush Sr. was good.

DEAD

Hey, you're insulting Gibbs

CowperKettle

Reagan was good, probably.

Ah, Obama is not bad too.

DEAD

It's 2016 people. You should be hating presidents.

CowperKettle

It's a pity that Sanders does not run.

DEAD

14:43

Eh/

CowperKettle

Jim Reynolds

@DEAD Hmmm ... So my slogan should be DEAD for president?

DEAD

Yes.

Jim Reynolds

O.O

CowperKettle

> - Why are we canning so much food, Mommy?
- Because President Putin has gone mad, dear, and we won't have enough food soon.

A recent meme

"and food will be in short supply soon" is probably a better translation, but the original has a mild expletive actually.

Jim Reynolds

14:48

It would be nice to see you, DEAD.

Quiz: Where is the extra comma in the above?

DEAD

@JimReynolds It's right there.

Jim Reynolds

:D

CowperKettle

15:06

Word of the day: total organic carbon. I've been scratching my head over the "TOC" abbreviation in my translation text, and managed to find it.

Damkerng T.

Congrats! :D

I might've thought of it as Terms of Contract! :P

CowperKettle

(0:

I thought the abbreviation was in Russian, and searched using the Russian letters

TOC in Russian reads as TOS

DEAD

Double-checking; It should be 'a homogeneous', right

@CowperKettle Table of contents

I remember it from TeXing.

CowperKettle

No, the sentence went like "Attachment of TOC to the monitoring system"

Damkerng T.

@DEAD In a text elsewhere?

DEAD

15:10

@DamkerngT. Ja

@CowperKettle Attachment of Table of Contents to the monitoring system. Makes perfect sense.

Damkerng T.

@CowperKettle Did FineReader solve your problem?

CowperKettle

(0:

@DamkerngT. I haven't yet tried it out.

I will, when I've finished the textual part of the translation.

Damkerng T.

Okay. Just in case. This is a teaser. :P

I downloaded a random image from the web, adjusted a few parameters in my old script, and got that.

Note that the output is not 100% perfect.

CowperKettle

It finds the textual lines by itself and cuts them out?

Nice.

Fills in with the background color even.

Damkerng T.

@CowperKettle Yes, but it assumes something, which is why I asked about the nature of your images.

Basically, it assumes that the font is black on white, and letters should not overlap with graphics.

DEAD

15:14

@DamkerngT. The blue is my votes.

Damkerng T.

@DEAD LOL

CowperKettle

I see. Yes, the font is "black-ish" there, sometimes gray (or 'grey'?)

Damkerng T.

@CowperKettle I used white as the background, but with an additional step, you can use any other background color.

CowperKettle

Nice!

Is this ImageMagick?

Damkerng T.

Yes. And only one single command (but a rather long one) at that!

CowperKettle

15:16

Can it mistakenly cut out a black chart line?

Damkerng T.

@CowperKettle One assumption my quick-and-dirty method makes is that texts are "denser" than lines.

CowperKettle

nods

Damkerng T.

So, if we don't have lines that are too close to each other, it should be okay.

(The key idea is the local standard deviation of texts should be higher than any other areas.)

CowperKettle

text removal in ImageMagick - I'll read that later

Damkerng T.

Oh! That technique is cool, too!

CowperKettle

15:20

Yes, the detexted duck looks nice

Damkerng T.

It uses "close" morphology.

@CowperKettle LOL!

CowperKettle

(0:

Damkerng T.

Sounds like fun. I think I'm gonna try it after taking a shower. :D

CowperKettle

(0:

Damkerng T.

(Bah! I should've thought of "closing" myself! It should work very well with thin texts.)

CowperKettle

15:41

12

Q: What happens to the 99.9 % of the sun-rays that do not fall on any planets or any other celestial body?

According to me about 99.9 % of the sun-rays that do not fall on any planet or any other celestial body keep on travelling farther and farther unto infinity. Apparently such rays get lost. Keeping in mind the colossal energy Sun has produced since 4.5 billion years I am somehow reluctant to reco...

astrophysics

Our whole existence hinges on just 0.01% of energy, the rest is redshifted to nothingness.

1

Q: How long would it take a Boeing 747 to go around Jupiter?

Assuming a 747 could fly around Jupiter at its top Earth speed (I know this assumption is unrealistic), how long would it take to fly around Jupiter once?

planet jupiter

CowperKettle

16:13

International Fixed Calendar

The International Fixed calendar (also known as the Cotsworth plan, the Eastman plan, the 13 Month calendar or the Equal Month calendar) is a solar calendar proposal for calendar reform designed by Moses B. Cotsworth, who presented it in 1902. It provides for a year of 13 months of 28 days each. It is therefore a perennial calendar, with every date fixed always on the same weekday. Though it was never officially adopted in any country, entrepreneur George Eastman adopted it for use in his Eastman Kodak Company, where it was used from 1928 to 1989. It is also the official calendar of UK supermarket...

Every date on the same weekday. Handy.

DEAD

16:44

Possible reasons it never succeeded in becoming something very official

1. Humans are weird and like weird calendars.

Jim Reynolds

1

Q: Count toward our grades or our grade?

I have an assignment that is 30 percent of my grade, would my teacher says this task counts toward 30 percent of you guys' grades or you guys' grade? Why

word-usage

I have explained how things are. Which are how they are because I have explained it.

O.O

@user62015 I think both are ok. I like grammar knowledge better, in most contexts, as a matter of style, because it's simpler.

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