This is damning for @propublica, and worth reading all the way through, including @bokane's translation
This is damning for @propublica, and worth reading all the way through, including @bokane's translation
@propublica @bokane The non-idiomatic aspects of Toy Reid's translation in @propublica should be jarring to any fluent English speaker once they are pointed out, like this one
@propublica @bokane The strangeness of that construction reminds me of how bizarre Singlish sounds at first to an American or a Aussie, because it's a creole that borrows a lot of word order from Chinese. Of *course* Toy Reid was using a dictionary or helper tools. I know I would.
Just because the thought has been nagging at me, I'll add that @bokane's explanation to @JamesFallows really captured what pissed me off so much about the original piece. Any reading comprehension exercise or test requires the reader to capture the meaning in *context*.
That's the whole game! It was in reading tests I took as a kid and it was in the Chinese exams and practice tests I've sat as an adult. Every time. And Toy Reid blew it. He blew it in obvious fashion to any reader of Chinese. For all his claimed expertise in party-speak,
Reid (and ProPublica) not only misled readers with what context they did (and did not) provide, he neglected the context provided by the document itself, which is that it's absolutely jammed with effusive self-flattery of the Party by the regional office.
I'm not fluent by any means. You have to be fluent to produce a proper translation, but you don't have to be fluent to find mistakes in Reid's reading comprehension.
@gtuckerkellogg You can assume the translations are spot on and the rest of the factual basis for the story is just as bad.