{"id":65,"date":"2014-05-21T22:59:00","date_gmt":"2014-05-21T22:59:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2017-01-17T20:59:08","modified_gmt":"2017-01-17T20:59:08","slug":"too-much-informations-sic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fresneltranslations.com\/blog\/2014\/05\/21\/too-much-informations-sic.html","title":{"rendered":"Too much informations [sic]"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Just recently in a translation facebook group we were talking about \u201cinformations\u201d, that monstrosity we\u2019re hearing all the more often. Well, on my Delta flight a month ago, the flight attendant -a native English speaker- said through the intercom: \u201cFor internet service look in your Sky magazine for informations on how to connect\u201d. Is this going to be yet another case of widespread misuse leading to widespread acceptance? Like \u2026\/nucular\/ instead of nuclear? Of course it\u2019s not as painful for me to hear as my pet peeve \u2013actually, calling it a pet peeve makes it sound cute. It\u2019s not cute. It\u2019s closer to a knife than to a pet. Not a knife sitting in my cutlery drawer but a knife being stabbed in my chest. So my \u201cstab knife\u201d is \u2026aircrafts (surprise surprise). And spacecrafts. As if mounting an engine is an activity of arts and crafts. <\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

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On the same flight, a couple of rows behind me, a mother \u2013native English speaker- was teaching new words to her little baby daughter. I could hear her say over and over again: \u201cWhere\u2019s the keys?\u201d, \u201cWhere\u2019s the books?\u201d, \u201cWhere\u2019s the bus?\u201d (she got one right, sigh of momentary relief), \u201cWhere\u2019s the girls?\u201d (back to stabbing). I felt the need to turn around and stop this, I wish it weren\u2019t inappropriate to intervene in cases of linguistic abuse, or to put it less mildly, language butchering. <\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

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On a more recent trip, right after I landed in Boston, I received a phone call from a guy claiming that I was in legal trouble and that I needed to pay him two thousand dollars to settle the matter in a friendly way right then and there, over the phone, instead of going to court. You guessed it, he was a scammer, but a professional one! Very well prepared, he had answers to all my questions. \u201cI\u2019m calling from your local police department, ma\u2019am\u201d, he said. When I asked him which police department that was, he said Cambridge. (I don\u2019t live in Cambridge; I used to, many years ago.) He kept saying to me in his Indian accent: \u201cWe got informations on you ma\u2019am. We got informations. According to our informations on you, ma\u2019am,\u2026\u201d. <\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

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I\u2019d had enough.  The grammar freak in me was getting palpitations, so I interrupted him and said: \u201cFirst of all, it is information, not informations, there\u2019s no s! Speak English damn it! And second, if you were really calling from the police department you would know that I don\u2019t live in Cambridge!\u201d <\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n
The guy went on: \u201cWell, where do you live ma\u2019am? We can transfer this to your local police department\u2026\u201d.  I hang up. I probably should have referred him to some English-language trainings (ouch, I stabbed myself).<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just recently in a translation facebook group we were talking about \u201cinformations\u201d, that monstrosity we\u2019re hearing all the more often. Well, on my Delta flight a month ago, the flight attendant -a native English speaker- said through the intercom: \u201cFor internet service look in your Sky magazine for informations on how to connect\u201d. Is this … Continue reading “Too much informations [sic]”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8iFRL-13","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fresneltranslations.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fresneltranslations.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fresneltranslations.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fresneltranslations.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fresneltranslations.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.fresneltranslations.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83,"href":"https:\/\/www.fresneltranslations.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65\/revisions\/83"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fresneltranslations.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fresneltranslations.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fresneltranslations.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}