Grammatical mistakes

[Paul B. Gallagher]

William Ryan wrote:

> I am amazed that Paul is amazed. Yes, British English differs from
> American English - we broke away from America some time ago - and the
> article in question was dealing entirely with British realia,
> institutions and current affairs, so British terms were rather to be
> expected.

I expected /some/ British terms, but as noted elsewhere in this thread, 
the page purports to be a U.S. version of the British page. Apparently 
that means they put a "U.S." label on it and think they're done.

But my amazement was not at the presence of /any/ unfamiliar terms, but 
as I thought I made clear, their density.

> Yes, the Treasury is the British government department which deals
> with finance and economic planning, surely not so very different from
> the US Treasury as to impede understanding,  ...

But our Treasury is unconcerned with local housing development issues, 
especially architecture and zoning; that's not their purview. Perhaps 
your Treasury is nosier in that regard, but that surprises me.

> ... redundant does indeed mean they were not needed.

Which indeed makes no sense. Any fool can string together words in a 
grammatically correct utterance, but as a translator I'm accustomed to 
making sense of the text so I can render it accurately in my TL.

> For the rest, a quick look at Wikipedia or Wiktionary would have
> dispelled his bafflement - and also revealed that some of the terms
> are not unknown in the USA, e.g (all from US sources).

In my private correspondence with other British listmates, I have 
pointed out that the last two of these were used in unfamiliar ways (see 
below).

> Built environment – the University of California has a “Center for
> the Built Environment”

Not a definition or explanation.

> house builder - "HOUSTON (ICIS news)--US house builder confidence
> fell to a new low in July as sales fell, credit tightened and the
> economy sank, a trade group said on Wednesday."

My original note (I think correctly) equated this to the "bog standard" 
;-) American term "home builder." If one or two American sources use 
"house builder," that doesn't change its meaning or its degree of 
familiarity.

> Identikit - see Websters New World College Dictionary, Cleveland
> Ohio, 2101, s.v. Identikit

Everyone tells me this has to do with police identification of suspects, 
which is both familiar and completely irrelevant to residential housing 
development. If you can show any link between the two, I will be both 
surprised and grateful.

> I confess I had not seen '"Legoland houses" before, but (Danish) Lego
> is sold in the US just as much as in the UK this journalistic
> metaphor is surely not too opaque?

I know all about Legos, my nephews have a room overflowing with them. 
But I hadn't seen the term "Legoland" applied to real-world housing -- 
should I conclude that these are ugly structures of prefab blocks that 
only approximate the shape of a real house?

-- 
War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left.
--
Paul B. Gallagher
pbg translations, inc.
"Russian Translations That Read Like Originals"
http://pbg-translations.com

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