Comma thoughts or the second child

 

Written language or, more specifically, its rules, is a matter of history and culture. All languages began as oral only. At some point, sooner or later, scholars transposed the words into pronunciation symbols (e.g., Western languages) or pictograms (e.g., Chinese). The timing and manner vary from country to country and language to language. This transposition of the spoken language includes the natural sound stops that serve to render oral speech clear in meaning and easy to understand. In written language, the pauses primarily take the form of periods and commas. Most interestingly, in English, end stop (.) usage rules have remained rather rigid while the use of the comma is rather intuitive and thus subject to disagreement and often raise the wrath of automated grammar checkers. Thus, I often ignore their mistake warnings and apply common sense instead of rules.

English, similar to its Germanic stepfather, has rather strict rules for the use of end stops. Specifically, the period marks the end of a sentence and a whole number sequence. See: I paid $20,000.75 in taxes last year. Some abbreviations require periods, notably Latin terms (e.g.) and initial letters of a name (H. G. Wells). There is a slight difference in British vs American usage in regard to the requirement for a period after titles and certain abbreviations, e.g., Mr, Mrs and Ltd in the UK are Mr. Mrs. and Ltd., in the United States, respectively. The vast majority of both native and non-native writers of English have no problem applying these rules.

However, the comma is a completely different story and involves interpretation as much as rules. To clarify, the comma represents the spoken pause taken to make a sentence easier to understand or indicate that a given part is less important. Thus, the spoken sentence “as I was telling you [pause] my cousin [pause] the one that just got engaged [pause] is coming to visit” becomes "As I was telling you, my cousin, the one that got engaged, is coming to visit". An infamous example of a comma-dependent text is "Crocodiles don’t swim here" as compared to "Crocodiles, don’t swim here" or its equally amusing family version of Let’s eat grandmother. The pauses and, therefore, the commas are required to ensure easy compression and create a certain hierarchy of ideas, i.e., distinguish the main idea from the additional information.

However, clarity is a case-specific criterion. Take, for example, the debate over the Oxford comma, the comma placed before the word “and” in lists. In most cases, its presence or absence has no effect on meaning or ease of understanding. Compare I need to buy bread, oil and tomatoes with I need to buy bread, oil, and tomatoes. However, in some cases, the extra comma does change the meaning. Compare "I love my parents, Batman and Robin" with "I love my parents, Batman, and Robin". It is possible to interpret the first sentence to mean that the parents are named Batman and Robin. In other words, in the vast majority of cases, English neither requires nor forbids a comma before the word and.

Ease of reading is also subjective. When the writer changes the order of supporting phrases or clauses, commas sometimes become necessary but personal choice can enter. For example, I would help if I had the time means the same as If I had the time, I would help. Apparently, in the second sentence, it is accepted practice to help the reader understand the location switch by placing a comma after the dependent clause. Likewise, dependent phrases at the beginning of a sentence are set off by commas. See: Some weeks ago, I noticed a change. Clearly, the comma helps the reader grasp the sentence more easily. By contrast, does this issue exist in comparing On Sundays, I go to church and On Sundays I go to church? The rule imposes a comma but I have no issue with the unpaused second version

As for hierarchy, the issue appears on complex sentences. The two sentence elements are of equal importance but some rules insist on a comma between them even when clarity or ease of reading is not involved. Consider: I wanted to go to the dance but nobody invited me. In my view, both elements are vital for the meaning of the sentence and should not be separated by a comma. That is true even for longer sentences: The company has decided to issue a dividend to the stockholders as its profits were much higher than expected. I see no issue with clarity or reading ease if the writer omits to put a comma after the word "stockholder".

These examples illustrate my complaint with automated language checkers. They apply formal language rules and warn me of my “errors”. I personally use Grammarly to QA my writing but reject most of its punctuation suggestions as irrelevant or even incorrect. I happen to have the knowledge to intelligently decide to accept or reject. However, many of the users of these programs are non-native writers and trust these tools blindly. You could say that users should apply careful judgment when using all automated tools, including AI. However, we all know that the gap between should and do is even farther than the gap between spoken and written language.

It is well known that most parents are far more flexible, i.e., lenient, with the second child than they were for their first child. Similar, the use of end stops in English writing is rather clear while the use of commas is a bit inconsistent and case-sensitive as least as far as I can see. You are allowed to disagree with machine-based language checkers. Common sense should rule punctuation also.

Bomb shelter culture – A silver lining

 

One of the themes of my blog posts is culture in its widest sense. Today’s post is about a special type of culture, one that has become unfortunately far too common and international, specifically the culture of people living with the need to run to bomb shelters at any moment. Most curiously enough, its extremity often brings out the best of people as I am experiencing.

For those who are unaware, as I am writing this post, millions of Christians, Muslims, both Sunni and Shia, Jews, and atheists live with the reality that they not only may but probably will have to run to a bomb shelter at any time in the near future, including in one minute. I personally have run to the shelter 4 times in the last 10 hours. These people are located in Kiev, Tel Aviv, Tehran, Doha, Beirut and Kuwait City, to name only a few. The threat danger may be from a 50 kilo or a 1000 kilo warhead. Warning time may range from seconds to minutes or even none. The nearest safe shelter may be in a reinforced room in the house but may be, more often than not, the bathroom or the stairwell when the public shelter is too far to be relevant or non-existent. Some people even sleep in underground railroad stations or parking lots. What all these people share in common is the utter lack of control over the frequency and timing of these threats.

The easiest part to cope with is the physical aspect. People learn to prepare for the siren. The “shelter bag” with water, snacks, reading material and activities for children waits ready by the door. People sleep with the maximum amount of clothing possible to minimize time spent on getting sufficiently dressed if they have to leave their house. Upon hearing the siren, after a few times, people make themselves minimally presentable, round up the children, grab the bag and go to the safest area. With practice, they even do so calmly, at least externally. It becomes a routine. It is amazing what people can get used to. The vast majority of people learn to function in this potentially deadly situation.

The hardest part of the routine is mental. The possibility of the need to run to the shelter dominates thinking. Success in taking a shower without having to run out wet is a victory. (I was caught in the shower a few days ago). Making a meal without having to turn off the gas in the middle is a relief. Shopping becomes a sprint. Despite the fatigue caused by the lack of continuous sleep, it even becomes difficult to fall asleep as someone one expects to hear an alarm the minute the eyes close. For those with small children, it involves not only the effort of keeping the children occupied , but also constant effort to emit a feeling of “all is under control” when it isn’t. For those with older family members with limited mobility, even getting them to the shelter requires patience and fortitude as these people simply cannot hurry or may not be able to access a shelter at all. All this effort creates intense emotional stress.

What I found amazing is that the situation brings out the best in people, just as it did during the Blitz in England during WW2. In my neighborhood, a bunch of small apartment houses surrounds an underground bomb shelter, which is also a Beit Knesset (synagogue). As such, it has proper seating and air conditioning, which is relative luxury, but it has stairs, making it difficult or impossible for some older people to access it. For the last week or so, the residents of the surrounding housing have gathered several times a day, including in the middle of the night, to spend anywhere from fifteen minutes to two hours together. The residents include people of all ages, colors, economic situations, and levels of religious faith. Younger people help older people go down stairs and assist mothers to lower buggies into the shelter. Neighbors that have not spoken to each other or refused to do so now converse pleasantly. People politely tell overly loud children to keep their voice down or smokers not to smoke at the entrance of the shelter or even consciously choose to ignore it, even though children’s voices at high volume and cigarette smoke can be extremely annoying in a small space. Previously important issues of disagreement are, for the moment, less relevant now. If it weren’t for the Hebrew, you might think the scene is in England.

This is my personal experience but I tend to think it significantly represents the experience of many of those stuck in the current rounds of violence, wherever they may be. The challenge of trying to lead a life under the constant threat of bombardment transcends politics; it makes no difference who started or who is responsible for the war; there will never be any consensus on that matter. On the other hand, I as an Israeli can easily imagine how the resident of Tehran or Kiev feels as this experience is universal with minor local differences. Most curiously, this danger brings out the humanity in most people, reducing the importance of many differences. We all want to live. Human beings do best when they cooperate. War is an awful way to remind us of that truth. Hopefully, this round of destruction will end soon worldwide. All we want is certainty and a normal life. In the meantime, you can say, as Dickens did, that it is worst of times and, in a certain sense, the best of times.

Coping with change – The Proz.com "What now? webinar event

 

The only constant in life is change, meaning that the only matter we control is our approach. My last post addressed the ITA conference on AI, which discussed its technical elements. This week, Proz.com hosted a 3.5-hour series of lectures on how to cope with a rapidly changing business environment and make the current transportation an opportunity, not a threat. The lecturers specifically discussed translation and interpretation but their message would be relevant to most professions today. As a rule, I try to take three “lessons” from any conference. From the excellent presentations in this event, I gleaned three key messages: the importance of flight (not running away); the process for smart diversification; and the practicality for constant improvement. All three tips mentally ease the process of adapting to a dynamic world and make the challenge far less daunting.

Joachim Lépine in his presentation discussed three ways to cope with declining income: "Walk away, dance... or fly?”. Specifically, he expressed his complete understanding of those that choose to take on a salary position in another industry because freelance translating is not paying the bills anymore. He also related to those that have gone full AI and reinvented themselves in terms of how they work. Most interestingly, he suggested that this moment, because of its chaotic nature, is an ideal time to try out any path that may seem exciting, whether or not it is related to one’s linguistic occupation. A combination of soft skills and enhanced interest can lead to a new source of income. Joachim referred to this as “flying” as the choice of the actual activity was not limited to the current choice of profession but involved seeking a potentially liberating occupational goal. As an additional bonus, his presentation excelled despite or because of the lack of any accompanying slides. Flying is neither staying the course nor switching direction but instead examining options.

The lecturer that followed him, David Higbee-Teves, discussed Japanese business concepts and how they apply to the current freelance translation market. One of his points was that the Japanese companies tend to diversify into fields for which they already have the required skills and facilities. Instead of risking limited resources in an unknown field, they analyse their competitive advantages and seek additional products and services that use the skills they possess. For example, in translation, it requires little additional training for a translator to become an editor of texts produced by machine translation or AI or even a copywriter as all the occupations demand similar linguistic skills. I recently took such a step, beginning to work with a young attorney to improve his English, which utilized both my teaching and legal background. Despite some initial uncertainty about my capability, we are both learning and enjoying the experience. Thus, diversifying into related fields is a relatively risk-free way of expanding one’s income.

Another Japanese business wisdom shared by David Higbee-Teves was the effect of continuous improvement. AI is being touted as the cure-all for all business processes but has yet to prove itself financially and functionally on a large scale. In simple words, some people claim that AI will completely replace human translation. However, in practice, creating the AI prompts to produce even a decent translation requires skill in prompting and does not always reduce human time and effort. By contrast,  a series of small but easy to apply improvements in the efficiency in standard business tasks can make a significant difference in productivity. The concept is to use AI to reduce 10- or 15-minutes tasks to 5 minutes or less. Several of these steps together will significantly increase the amount of time the linguist (or any other professional) has to apply to money-making tasks that require human thinking. These tasks could include intake of new orders, invoicing, quoting, and standard email communication, to name a few. The time involved in any single activity is minor but accumulates rapidly over a day or week. The professional linguist can use this time for production, marketing, continuing education or simply enjoying life. Improvement is a continual process, not a one-time activity.

Thus, in the face of an unclear future, professionals need clear vision in order to make correct decisions. The Proz.com event provided numerous relevant tips for linguists, ones that are also applicable to many types of professionals. With a handful of methods in hand, it becomes easier to adjust to current trends and find an effective match between market needs and individual strengths. Even more importantly, the unknown becomes less frightening and more interesting in a positive way. Professionals do control how they react to change even if they do not control the change itself.

Speaking of an uncertain world, as I post this, the residents of Israel, including myself, as well as those in Persian Gulf countries, Jordan, and now Lebanon, not to mention the people of Iran, live in great uncertainty and under constant fear. I can tell you with firsthand knowledge that the random and frequent need to run to a bomb shelter at any time of the day or night is one of the most distressful experiences one can have. Thus, I hope that very soon, in a few days hopefully, the people of the Middle East will wake up to a peaceful, more stable world where nobody calls for the destruction of any other nation or people. I am realistic enough to know that such tranquility will not occur immediately but we need to "fly", build on the changes that occurred and take constant small steps.