{"id":5,"date":"2012-04-07T01:45:12","date_gmt":"2012-04-07T01:45:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rottendanish.pereffect.com\/wp\/?page_id=2"},"modified":"2012-04-07T01:45:12","modified_gmt":"2012-04-07T01:45:12","slug":"sample-page-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/?page_id=5","title":{"rendered":"About this blog"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>My name is Andr\u00e9 Perman. This blog is a collection of quirks and\u00a0amusing\u00a0things which\u00a0I’ve\u00a0come across in my years of work as a Danish Linguist<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Working for generally English-speaking companies my title of “Danish Linguist” reflects what I am perceived to be adding to the mix. However, probably the most challenging aspect of my work is that of being an English<\/strong> linguist.<\/p>\n

As we say in Danish: “the sweet child has many names”… Localization, L10n, Internationalization, i18n, translation…\u00a0A linguist’s work\u00a0(for a US company) usually involves text originally in English, translated into a\u00a0target language and then reviewed for accuracy, appropriateness\u00a0and tone. It is often not until we see the text in the target language (in my case Danish)\u00a0that we realize that the original English could be misunderstood – and was.<\/p>\n

So mostly\u00a0this blog is about\u00a0English<\/strong> sentences which I or my\u00a0colleagues\u00a0have rescued from being mistranslated. Usually not because of poor translation skills, but because the original\u00a0English was ambigous. Or often internationalization professionals only see a sentence out of context, –\u00a0and without a context strange things can happen. Hopefully the examples here will serve as educational anecdotes for those responsible for writing internationalizable, good English and for those responsible for localizing it. Typically the difficult sentences have words which can both be verbs and nouns in English, contain English grammar that is either correct, but not well known, or just incorrect, or words that sound or look similar to other words, -and if they can be misunderstood, they often are :-).<\/p>\n

The art of localization could definitely benefit from a mark-up language which identified, in case of doubt, whether a particular word was a verb or a noun and allowed for marking up of other aspects of a sentence potentially causing ambiguity.<\/p>\n

So, in spite of the name, this blog will be mostly about English, although occasionally quirky Danish will also be quoted. It’s all for fun.<\/p>\n

And the name “Rotten Danish<\/strong>” was chosen of course partly because of\u00a0my Danish affinities, but also\u00a0exactly for all the ways in which it is ambigous:<\/p>\n

Is it a Hamlet reference (“there’s something rotten in the state of Denmark…”)?
\nIs it talking about the Danish soccer players who beat your favorite team?
\nAre we talking about Grauballe Man, the 2000 years old mummified body of an Iron Age Dane found in a peat bog in 1953?
\nOr are we referring to some baked goods, aka. danishes,\u00a0going bad?
\nOr is there a live rat involved some place?<\/p>\n

Yes! Only two words, and so many possibilities…
\n<\/strong>Enjoy. And join the conversation.<\/p>\n

\n \n \"Fb-Button\"\n <\/a>\n <\/div>
<\/fb:like><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My name is Andr\u00e9 Perman. This blog is a collection of quirks and\u00a0amusing\u00a0things which\u00a0I’ve\u00a0come across in my years of work as a Danish Linguist. Working for generally English-speaking companies my title of “Danish Linguist” reflects what I am perceived to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"showcase.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-5","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":119,"href":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5\/revisions\/119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rottendanish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}