fancy language in dpreview news teasers - why?

[porentief]

Am I the only one noticing a shift in the wording style of dpreview's news teasers?

I appreciate the RSS feed to not miss anything, but I do notice since a while that for one the information content of the teaser is rather minimal - ok I guess that's intentional to get one click through to the page. But also the phrases used are (at least to me as a non-native speaker) sometimes a bit puzzling - I can only guess what the author had in mind when writing:

• "...polish off the last of the mince pies..."

• "Hardly the end of the world then but as ever Ricoh is right there with a fix, good on them we say."

• "...can the S8000fd be all things to all people?"

• "Kudos to Ricoh for giving its existing cameras a new lease of life ..."

No offence please - I appreciate this site and the work you guys put into it, and I do realize that non-native English speakers are in a minority here. I'm also more passively reading this site than actively contributing, and that gives me even less right to criticize - so it's more intended as a little feedback from "the rest of us".

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Rainer

 

[Phil Askey]

Why not?

Am I the only one noticing a shift in the wording style of dpreview's
news teasers?

I appreciate the RSS feed to not miss anything, but I do notice since
a while that for one the information content of the teaser is rather
minimal - ok I guess that's intentional to get one click through to
the page. But also the phrases used are (at least to me as a
non-native speaker) sometimes a bit puzzling - I can only guess what
the author had in mind when writing:

• "...polish off the last of the mince pies..."

• "Hardly the end of the world then but as ever Ricoh is right there

with a fix, good on them we say."

• "...can the S8000fd be all things to all people?"

• "Kudos to Ricoh for giving its existing cameras a new lease of

life ..."

No offence please - I appreciate this site and the work you guys put
into it, and I do realize that non-native English speakers are in a
minority here. I'm also more passively reading this site than
actively contributing, and that gives me even less right to criticize

• so it's more intended as a little feedback from "the rest of us".

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Rainer

--
Phil Askey
Editor, dpreview.com

 

[Magne Nilsen]

I disagree, albeit my non-English tongue and parents.

It makes me think there's a real person posting them... and not just ad agency copywriters.

~~~~
Magne

 

[LeRentier]

You are very lucky because if all of these remarks were spoken you might have to deal with bristolian, cockney and other accents.

Machines don't use local expressions and, in a country where people serve green deserts with a blue taste it should also be obvious that pies contain meat and no cherries.
Oh, how do you translate 'berliner luft' ?

 

[porentief]

Why not?

I use this site as an information resource, mainly. Burying information within things that I don't understand makes it harder for me to find what I was loking for. If I happen to find this information somwhere else quicker, I might look there more often and Dpreview looses one "customer.

I'm sure this site would be able to cope with this loss

On the other hand I don't find it right to just go away without providing feedback and finding out if that interests someone.

PS: I also use this site for fun and that part in me will likely stay anyways

 

[Steven Major]

...in the ever attempt to be intresting often write stupid and misleading words. They write about the same subjects over and over again...they get board. I prefer the leave my emotions out of it please just speak to my mind approach...but it ain't all about me...and no reason it should be.

 

[Paul Boothroyd]

You are very lucky because if all of these remarks were spoken you
might have to deal with bristolian, cockney and other accents.
Machines don't use local expressions and, in a country where people
serve green deserts with a blue taste it should also be obvious that
pies contain meat and no cherries.
Oh, how do you translate 'berliner luft' ?

Well I don't know how to translate 'berliner luft', but I do know that the original mince pies had a filling that was minced meat with apple, raisins and spices (probably to hide the slightly rotten meat taste!) but over the years the filling has lost the meat and become sweet rather than savoury.
--
Paul

 

[Jan Moren]

Doesn't sound "fancy", just British English. And as a non-native speaker who learned British, not American English in school, I appreciate it.

--
Japan: http://janneinosaka.blogspot.com
Images: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jannem/

 

[LeRentier]

Because I live in a country where people eat cheese which moves all by itself I always abstained from pies because it was impossible to tell what one would find inside.

Along the same lines I determined that Christmas Pudding is an accumulation of at least six months worth of almost culinary compost, mixed with flour and boiled and cooked to elilinate most of the germs, than served with warm custard to help it go down.

Your turn.

 

[Paul Boothroyd]

Cheese which moves all by itself eh! That sounds interesting. Do you need a hunting licence to shoot the wild variety or is it farmed?

Christmas pudding should be well matured; my grandmother lost one (home-made), behind a bookcase for two years and it was wonderful to eat; it probably had so much alcohol in it that it would have kept edible for decades..................

Did you know that in the Royal Navy of the late C18th. and early C19th. a favourite pudding was Boiled Baby?

How did this turn into a cookery thread?
--
Paul

 

[LeRentier]

Nothing quaint or queer in the UK will ever surprise me.
Christmas Pudding which is NOT soaked in some kind of booze is useless.
I like the ones 'marinated' in Bristol Cream.
Oh, enjoy your boiled baby and, don't go over the mark.

 

[Glen Barrington]

Those guys are effete, overeducated, polysyllabic snobs.
--
STOP Global Stasis! Change is good!

Now that you've judged the quality of my typing, take a look at my photos. . .
http://www.photo.net/photos/GlenBarrington

 

[porentief]

You might have a point here. We did learn "Oxford English" in school but that's ages away. I'm dealing with the US alot and that probably sets my personal reference.

I thought my English was not so bad and I used to be convinced that British and American is not so far away - in writing at least. Guess you're learning something new every day!

Doesn't sound "fancy", just British English. And as a non-native
speaker who learned British, not American English in school, I
appreciate it.

 

[porentief]

ok - it's not the language sounding weird then - some folks just are like that?

Nothing quaint or queer in the UK will ever surprise me.
Christmas Pudding which is NOT soaked in some kind of booze is useless.
I like the ones 'marinated' in Bristol Cream.
Oh, enjoy your boiled baby and, don't go over the mark.

 

[René Schuster]

Am I the only one noticing a shift in the wording style of dpreview's
news teasers?
I appreciate the RSS feed to not miss anything, but I do notice since
a while that for one the information content of the teaser is rather
minimal - ok I guess that's intentional to get one click through to
the page. But also the phrases used are (at least to me as a
non-native speaker) sometimes a bit puzzling - I can only guess what
the author had in mind when writing:

• "...polish off the last of the mince pies..."
• "Hardly the end of the world then but as ever Ricoh is right there

with a fix, good on them we say."

• "...can the S8000fd be all things to all people?"
• "Kudos to Ricoh for giving its existing cameras a new lease of

life ..."
No offence please - I appreciate this site and the work you guys put
into it, and I do realize that non-native English speakers are in a
minority here. I'm also more passively reading this site than
actively contributing, and that gives me even less right to criticize

• so it's more intended as a little feedback from "the rest of us".

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Rainer

except for reasons of politeness I think there is no rule here saying posts have to be written in English, also schlagen wir mal kurz zurück, damit "die anderen" auch mal das deppe Gefühl haben, nicht alles oder auch gar nichts mitzukriegen, lol!

Der geringe information content der teasers - nun, ich denke, dafür heissen sie teasers, den Leser neugierig machen, damit er weiterclickt. Eben teasers. Natürlich lästig, wenn ich hoffe, in einem teaser schon kurz und knapp die Hauptinfo der Nachricht serviert zu bekommen, aber das ist ja eigentlich nicht gewollt. Wäre zwar schön, aber...

Zu den puzzling phrases: Ich sehe das ein wenig anders; ich finde gerade mir unbekannte Redewendungen oder auch slang-Ausdrücke sehr interessant, alldieweil man meist genau DAS in der Schule nicht gelernt hat. Ist doch eine prima Gelegenheit, in Sachen Englisch was dazu zu lernen!

Klar, ist ganz schön lästig, wenn man in einem post 5 oder 6 Worte oder Redewendungen nachschlagen muss (falls man sich nicht mit dem ungefähren Sinn -und den kriegt man ja meist mit- zufrieden gibt).

Meist läuft bei mir in einem zweiten tab noch leo dictionary mit, um mal schnell was nachzusehen, bei deinen beispielen war es "polish off" und "lease of life" (die "mince pie" stell´ich mir so grauslich vor, daß ich mir das Nachschlagen erspart habe, lol).

Polish off war easy: http://dict.leo.org/ende?lp=ende&lang=de&searchLoc=0&cmpType=relaxed&sectHdr=on&spellToler=on&search=polish+off&relink=on

bei "lease on (nicht of) live" fand ich die Lösung erst ganz unten auf der Seite in Form eines Links zu einem Forum:

http://dict.leo.org/ende?lp=ende&lang=de&searchLoc=0&cmpType=relaxed&sectHdr=on&spellToler=on&search=lease+on+life&relink=on
aber da war es dann sehr schön übersetzt:

http://dict.leo.org/forum/viewUnsolvedquery.php?idThread=209722&idForum=2&lp=ende&lang=de

So, bleibt mir nur noch -der Jahreszeit entsprechend- dir ein "Frohe Weihnachten und Guten Rutsch" um die Ohren zu hauen, lol!

Gruß

René

PS: Wie kommt man auf "porentief"?! Riecht irgendwie so nach Clearasil, lol!

 

[linuxworks]

Because I live in a country where people eat cheese which moves all
by itself

ahh, my old college dorm days....

open the fridge - is this food or a science project?

glad those days are long gone.



--
Bryan
(pic stream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/linux-works ) ~

 

[zygh]

I'm a not a native English speaker but I do not agree with the OP one bit. I think the use of this "posh" (?!) language just makes the reviews that much more enjoyable. If some of the language used in the reviews is too much for the OP, I suggest skip those parts and focus on the parts you do understand. The "posh" ( ) ) parts are anything but definitive for the whole idea of the review anyway. Focus on the tests and images and things one is able to understand and don't rob the rest of us of the delicious tid bits. I too am sick an tired of the same words and expressions used ad nauseam in every other review out there. So, please, be gentle and just ignore the bits that surpass yr understanding of the language. It's that easy.
Cheery-o!

--
http://www.flickrleech.net/user/William+Gregory
http://zygh.deviantart.com/gallery/

 

[LeRentier]

Damals, wenn ich ein schuljunge war, hatten wir ein lehrbuch für deutsch mit die Name : "Übung macht den Meister".

Unser Lehrer verpflichtete uns auch das gotische schrift zu lernen und dass war nicht einfach. Zwischen "s","f",und "t" brauchten wir viel übung.
Also, ein wörterbuch da zu und "hang in there".....

 

[BIJ001]

except for reasons of politeness I think there is no rule here saying
posts have to be written in English, also schlagen wir mal kurz
zurück, damit "die anderen" auch mal das deppe Gefühl haben, nicht
alles oder auch gar nichts mitzukriegen, lol!

Achtung! Andere dürften das auch mitkriegen!

Diese Gefahr wäre geringer, wenn wir uns auf meiner Muttersprache (ungarisch) unterhielten ;-)

Warning! Other people might understand that!
This danger could be diminished, if we wrote in my mother tongue Hungarian ;-)

Nice holidays and a happy new year allerseits!

 

[René Schuster]

Damals, wenn ich ein schuljunge war, hatten wir ein lehrbuch für
deutsch mit die Name : "Übung macht den Meister".
Unser Lehrer verpflichtete uns auch das gotische schrift zu lernen
und dass war nicht einfach. Zwischen "s","f",und "t" brauchten wir
viel übung.
Also, ein wörterbuch da zu und "hang in there".....

Pas mal, Pascal!

Wish I could reply in French as good as you do in German! But I better forget about that, lol!

Just hope you didn´t have to learn your German during the darker days of our history, when Adolf & Co. "payed a visit" to your country!

Gotische Schrift, wow, I think most Germans of today would have a hard time with that. I can´t write it, just read, as my first children´s books were those of my mother from the days when she was a child, all in Gothic or black letter.

"..Wörterbuch dazu und hang in there.." - pretty much what I wrote in my German reply to Rainer! Not really funny if you have to look up several words in a post but I see it as great chance to learn a bit more English.

Joyeux Noel (how do I get the 2 dots on the e ?) à toi et à toute ta famille!

René