OT: excellent book on information theory

[Terry Hancock]

On Mon, 16 Jan 2006 12:15:25 -0500
"Tim Peters" <tim.one at comcast.net> wrote:
> You should enjoy:
> 
>    http://www.hp-lexicon.org/about/books/differences.html
> 
> and especially the links near the bottom to
> try-to-be-exhaustive listings of all differences between
> the Bloomsbury (UK) and Scholastic (US) editions.  More
> "Britishisms" are surviving in the Scholastic editions as
> the series goes on, but as the list for Half-Blood Prince
> shows the editors still make an amazing number of
> seemingly pointless changes:
> 
>    http://www.hp-lexicon.org/about/books/hbp/differences-hbp.html
> 
> like:
> 
>    UK:    Harry smiled vaguely back
>    US:    Harry smiled back vaguely

I know you are pointing out the triviality of this, since
both US and UK English allow either placement -- but is it
really preferred style in the UK to put the adverb right
before the verb?  In US English, the end of the clause
(or the beginning) is probably more common.

This actually gets back on topic ( ;-) ), because it might
affect the localization of a Python interactive fiction
module I'm working on -- it's a GUI to generate "sentences"
that are comprehensible to the IF engine.  My base locale
(which would be "en" or maybe "en_US") uses the order:

"subj verb dobj prep iobj advb"
(subject) (verb) (direct object) (preposition) (indirect
object) (adverb).

The order is forced by the GUI, for usability reasons, but
I'm planning to make it part of the localization. (For
example I currently imagine the Japanese locale would use:
"subj dobj prep advb verb" with "preposition" glossed as
"particle", which is usually pretty accurate).

Using a meaningful adverb at all is kind of unusual, but it
mates fairly well with new fuzzy logic concepts inside in
the IF engine.  I stuck the adverb at the end as the most
natural sounding place to my ear.

Should the locale en_UK use instead:

"subj advb verb dobj prep iobj"

?

E.g.:

en_US:
"Sally, gently put flower in basket"

vs

en_UK:
"Sally, put flower in basket gently"

> Non-English translations have real challenges, and because
> this series is more popular than the Python Reference
> Manual these days, there's a lot of fascinating info to be
> found.  For example, I think the Japanese translator
> deserves a Major Award for their heroic attempt to
> translate Ron's "Uranus" pun:
> 
>    http://www.cjvlang.com/Hpotter/wordplay/uranus.html

That's a terrific site, BTW, thanks for posting it.

Cheers,
Terry 


-- 
Terry Hancock (hancock at AnansiSpaceworks.com)
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com