Elegant variation

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Elegant variation

by loiswakeman @ 02 May. 2008 – 16:16:23

At school, I was taught to use elegant variation - not repeating the same phrase exactly in a passage of writing, to make it more interesting. When I was later trained as a technical author, I learnt the opposite: use standard phrases so you don't confuse the reader.

Spammers have a vested interest in elegant variation (how many synonyms can they invent for male appendages for example?) - which - they hope - gets them past the spam filters so many people use. Some of the results are accidentally quite poetic - if somewhat lacking in understanding of 'English as she is spoke'. This one caught my eye:

"Greetings, brakes a software? Qualitative replacement is necessary!"

I guess they really meant "Hey you, is your computer knackered? Buy some illegal software from us and we'll finish the job for you, guaranteed cheap." But I have a vision of some robed sage declaiming the phrase out of a lighted window in sonorous tones!
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- spam
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- elegant variation

13 Comments to Elegant variation

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- LissaT ^Pro
- 02 May. 2008 @ 16:54:30
Have you ever in an idle moment fed a well known piece of prose into babelfish or some similar programme, and refed it through two or three languages before geting back to English? The results can be hilarious travesties of the lingo what we speaks.
- - LissaT ^Pro
  - 02 May. 2008 @ 16:58:42
  I thought I would offer you this which has been through just French and German:
  
  In order to be or not be: c' is the question: If ' ; tis more nobly in l' To suffer spirit the reins and the arrows of the unworthy fortune to take or over arms against a sea of the problems and by l' They terminate opposition? In order to die: in order to sleep; No more; and by a sleep, around us to say terminate the d' grief; Love and it on thousand normal shocks is this meat inheritance, ' ; tis a consumption with wish' to be inbrunst; ; D. in order to die, in order to sleep; In order to sleep: perhaps at the dream: ay, there' ; s of the chafing strips;
  - - Cristian (Visitor)
    - http://www.spammer.com/prat
    - 17 Dec. 2008 @ 15:30:19
    Cristian, you are an unmitigated spambag, and I wish you a life of perpetual back pain like the silly people who buy your spammy products.
    
    The blog owner changed this comment on 17 Dec. 2008 21:20:31
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- - loiswakeman
  - http://lois.co.uk
  - 02 May. 2008 @ 17:13:13
  I have indeed - though not for a while. Shakespeare must be rotational within her serious!
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- SeasideMan ^Pro
- 02 May. 2008 @ 17:44:08
Those emails amuse me too. I get several most days and they always raise a chuckle. It must be quite a sophisticated gobbledegook generator they use.

On the subject of bad translation mentioned above, there are some famous ones from the third Star Wars film:

"Long Time Ago in the Faraway Galaxy"

"Revenge of the Sith: The Backstroke of the West"

"It's just a flock of fish to fame for it's person"

"You two careful, he is a big"

"You are a sacrifice article that I cut up now"

"Giving first aid the already dishevelled hair projection"

"The front is a lemon avenue flying straightly"

"The Presbyterian church likes enjoys you not"

etc. etc.

The full list including screenshots is here:

http://winterson.com/2005/06/episode-iii-backstroke-of-west.html

Cheers, Tom.
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- Usksider ^Pro
- http://www.usksider.co.uk
- 02 May. 2008 @ 20:43:31
I wonder if they still teach elegant variation in schools... I bet they don't!
- - loiswakeman
  - http://lois.co.uk
  - 06 May. 2008 @ 08:28:55
  I suspect the average 15 year old would answer that with "You what?". (And possibly the English teacher too.)
  - - Usksider ^Pro
    - http://www.usksider.co.uk
    - 06 May. 2008 @ 09:05:39
    It's the bit about the teacher that worries me!
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- tylluanpenry
- 02 May. 2008 @ 21:33:21
I'm not sure they teach elegant anything anywhere any more..... (I can't believe I just wrote that. Maybe I should just go and lie down somewhere....)
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- menhir
- 02 May. 2008 @ 22:00:01
I would be surprised if some kids knew what 'elegant meant. I saw a 13 year old trying on a dress in a store changing room. She had the figure for it, it draped elegantly and looked fabulous on her until she could no longer maintain her posture. She rested in what was for her, a comfortable slouch. Just beforehand, I had complimented the girl and told her how elegant she looked in the dress. "What does that mean?"

Out of the spontaneous exchange, two things occurred; I was impressed that she could ask me what I meant, but saddened that a young person of that age did not understand a compliment because she did not have the knowledge of what I would have thought,was reasonably ordinary vocabulary for her age. I guess I should have gone into 'fab' or 'cool' mode. I wonder if she would have understood 'mode'; probably not.

The second thing that occurred was, before she had gone home, the girl had added a new word to her personal word store.

Education here, in general, is not bad, so other influences are at play. Certainly, sprog and her friends at that age would have had no trouble with understanding the concept of being elegant, except that was the age it didn't bother them. As for Elegant use of language, depending on interpretation of that thought, that's another story.
- - loiswakeman
  - http://lois.co.uk
  - 06 May. 2008 @ 08:30:10
  Your good deed for the day - we increase young vocabularies one word at a time.
  - - menhir
    - 06 May. 2008 @ 10:05:40
    You never know, she might retain the memory!
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- skip2468
- 14 May. 2008 @ 19:34:10
The degrading of our mother tongue is surely to be despised and never to be flattered.
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