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The sinking of MS Estonia: Case Reopened Part VII

JayUtah said:
You made the details of the Brandeburg report relevant. One of the details appears to be that the translator doesn't know what he's talking about. Who translated the report, Vixen? Do you know? Based on these errors, why do you consider it trustworthy evidence?
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I expect it was outsourced to a translator. Whoever proofread it missed it. Look, I am really not interested in 'font' versus 'fount' - type flame wars. I am out of the perlite topic.
 
Vixen said:
I expect it was outsourced to a translator.
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Is that a long-winded way of saying you have no idea who the translator is?

Why did the translator produce such incoherent English? I'd have asked for my money back.

Vixen said:
Whoever proofread it missed it.
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Or it was never proofread. It's not a misspelling. It's literally the wrong word. You said yourself it's a scientific report. In science, the right words matter. If neither the translator or the proofreader knew enough about the subject material of the report, what makes it trustworthy evidence? Why didn't the proofreader fix all the bad English?

Vixen said:
Look, I am really not interested in 'font' versus 'fount' - type flame wars. I am out of the perlite topic.
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This is not a flame war. You told us that your knowledge of the details of the report gave you a better interpretation of it than mine. Yet you are among the many people in the chain of custody for this evidence who doesn't know that perlite has nothing to do with metallurgy. I gave you one paragraph from the report, and all you could do with it was select some words from it and copy paste a definition for them from Wikipedia. And then all you can do is give us your standard high-altitude fly-by and then frantically try to change the subject.

Next sentence.
A destruction of the lamellae has occurred which cannot occur by any comparable mechanical technological influence.
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Yes, I know that you can copypaste a definition of lamella. Tell me what the author means by "comparable mechanical technological linfluence." Comparable to what? What's an "influence" in this context? Are we just waving cesium in its general direction or something?
 
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Andy_Ross said:
If you understood the subject and report you would have known what rhe difference was and picked up the mistake.
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She did correct the mistake by providing the Wikipedia definition for pearlite, but that's easily done by clicking the links offered by the other Wikipedia definitions she looked up. If you just search for "perlite," you get the correct definition for volcanic stuff. She didn't realize the problem until many pages into the questioning.

You have to take the extra step of trying to imagine what it must have looked like in German. The ah-ha! moment comes when you realize that it's not just the translator misspelling an English word, but the translator choosing the wrong word from two alternatives when a scientifically literate translator would have had no problem knowing what it should have been. It's ignorance, not carelessness. We'll touch on that some more, as this is hardly the only problematic translation in the report.
 
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JayUtah said:
Is that a long-winded way of saying you have no idea who the translator is?

Why did the translator produce such incoherent English? I'd have asked for my money back.


Or it was never proofread. It's not a misspelling. It's literally the wrong word. You said yourself it's a scientific report. In science, the right words matter. If neither the translator or the proofreader knew enough about the subject material of the report, what makes it trustworthy evidence? Why didn't the proofreader fix all the bad English?


This is not a flame war. You told us that your knowledge of the details of the report gave you a better interpretation of it than mine. Yet you are among the many people in the chain of custody for this evidence who doesn't know that perlite has nothing to do with metallurgy. I gave you one paragraph from the report, and all you could do with it was select some words from it and copy paste a definition for them from Wikipedia. And then all you can do is give us your standard high-altitude fly-by and then frantically try to change the subject.

Next sentence.


Yes, I know that you can copypaste a definition of lamella. Tell me what the author means by "comparable mechanical technological linfluence." Comparable to what? What's an "influence" in this context? Are we just waving cesium in its general direction or something?
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Things such as welding or hardening. Analysing the composition of chemical elements, etc.
 
JayUtah said:
She did correct the mistake by providing the Wikipedia definition for pearlite, but that's easily done by clicking the links offered by the other Wikipedia definitions she looked up. If you just search for "perlite," you get the correct definition for volcanic stuff. She didn't realize the problem until many pages into the questioning.

You have to take the extra step of trying to imagine what it must have looked like in German. The ah-ha! moment comes when you realize that it's not just the translator misspelling an English word, but the translator choosing the wrong word from two alternatives when a scientifically literate translator would have had no problem knowing what it should have been. It's ignorance, not carelessness. We'll touch on that some more, as this is hardly the only problematic translation in the report.
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Let it go.
 
Vixen said:
Yes I did recognise it, hence I provided the definition for 'pearlite', not 'perlite'.
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No.

You didn't understand the difference until I pointed it out to you, and I had to ask you several times to define "perlite" before you finally learned it was a different word—because I told you so. Then you wrongly tried to dismiss it as a mere typo. You yourself said "perlite" a number of times when you meant "pearlite." The one and only time you've said "pearlite" is when Wikipedia led you there from other metallurgy terms.

Nice try, but you didn't know what you were talking about until you were instructed by me.
 
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JayUtah said:
No.

You didn't understand the difference until I pointed it out to you, and I had to ask you several times to define "perlite" before you finally learned it was a different word—because I told you so. Then you wrongly tried to dismiss it as a mere typo. You yourself said "perlite" a number of times when you meant "pearlite." The one and only time you've said "pearlite" is when Wikipedia led you there from other metallurgy terms.

Nice try, but you didn't know what you were talking about until you were instructed by me.
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It no point did I think we were talking about glass.
 
Andy_Ross said:
If you understood the subject and report you would have known what the difference was and picked up the mistake.
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All the AI chatbots I asked to restate the paragraph picked up on it too and assumed "pearlite" was intended. As I said, you have to look closer to see that it's not just a typo; it's an ignorant mistranslation. Then when you understand just how absurdly bad the translation is throughout the report, you start to see all kinds of similar problems. And yes, they do materially alter what the report means. Does "comparable" really mean "comparable?" is "influence" the right word? Is "mechanical technical?" a clumsy translation of a German idiom?
 
Vixen said:
It no point did I think we were talking about glass.
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You didn't realize that "perlite" was irrelevant to metallurgy until I told you. You didn't realize that the translator didn't know what he was talking about either, until I told you. That means you don't understand the report as well as I do.
 
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JayUtah said:
You didn't realize that "perlite" was irrelevant to metallurgy until I told you. You didn't realize that the translator didn't know what he was talking about either. That means you don't understand the report as well as I do.
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I simply assumed - correctly - it was nothing to do with volcanic material.
 
JayUtah said:
We're very interested in the Brandeburg report—so much so that we're willing to discuss it in detail. As you noted, scientific reports contain words that often have precise meanings, and often very particular off-brand meanings that must be carefully preserved.

I'm fortunate enough that one of my principal engineers was born, raised, and educated in Köln. He has lived in the U.S. for about twenty years, so he also speaks excellent English. Although he deals mostly in plastics, he is quite acquainted with metallurgy as it is practiced and written about in Germany. The German word Perlit means both pearlite and perlite. Just as you have to know how an EPIRB works in order to know how to correctly translate viritys as "arm" and not "tune," you have to know from context which way to translate Perlit. Luckily, perlite is utterly irrelevant to metallurgy, so if you're translating a metallurgy report you know that pearlite is always the right word.

That is, if you know anything about metallurgy.

It's not just "poxy spelling." The translator doesn't know which word to use because the translator is unfamiliar with the subject matter. And so are you, which is why you think it's just a typo. What about words like "panel-shaped" and "in volume?" What about the awkward English constructions like, "These processes show in surface-near areas comparable effects?" What about the sentence that says we have to exclude explosive effects and then goes on to try to draw that very comparison?

I picked that paragraph because it's exemplary of the errors and gibberish you have to walk through in order to read the report. No, "panel-shaped" doesn't mean anything in metallurgy. Nor does "in volume." Because I know metallurgy, I can confidently identify the gibberish. But because you don't, you can't—you have to coyly pretend that it might mean something just in case.

So who translated the report, Vixen? Was it Rabe? Was it Anér? It's clearly someone with a poor grasp of English and an even poorer grasp of metallurgy. Tell us why we should trust that this report was accurately translated?
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Oh, bravo! The twist I never saw coming (probably because I know nothing of metallurgy).
 
Vixen said:
I simply assumed - correctly - it was nothing to do with volcanic material.
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No, you assumed wrongly that "perlite" was the right word to use for metallurgy, because you didn't know any better. As much as you want to claim you corrected the Brandenburg report this time around, you used "perlite" incorrectly a dozen or so times before, when we talked about the Brandenburg report initially. Why didn't you correct the "typo" then? Why didn't you fix it in the quote when you footnoted what you thought was its definition?

No, you accidentally got it right when you copypasted the definition from Wikipedia after following links to it from other words.
 
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