Apparently no one ever "buys" or "sells" anything that often, or at least it's rarely discussed.

[mc776]

The Up-Goer 5 Text Editor

Attempting to rewrite this was an unmitigated failure, but I did manage to get most of my will (the only omission is that my boss gets my law books) and the Standard CBA Real Estate Undertakings letter.

And, of course, my job description, which in retrospect I've got a much easier job of writing in this thing than a lot of people.

(h/t: steorra who got into the hall of fame EDIT: and featured on io9 with a much superior work than mine)


EDIT: it occurs to me that, in glossing over just what papers need to be signed (3 out of 4 of them dealing with tax issues and the 4th being an instrument to effect a change in a government registry) and in focussing on the "bank" sense of "institutional chargeholder", I've conveniently avoided the entire issue of referring to government institutions or taxation. I'm actually kinda scared of what stark, awful admissions must be made about our society if I did have to make explicit references in compliance with UG5TE standards.

Comments

[helarxe]

It might just be me, but instead of sounding drier, this makes stuff somehow sound more fanciful :O


This is believed by a people from the sun-up direction.
To know too much about a thing is bad because it becomes big in the mind.
To change too much for the good at once gives pain to the people of away and has been.
A man should have a big flying animal that thinks far, fights lots of men easily and does the strange.
A woman too should do the strange. A woman is above a man. They do not know if a woman is above a big flying animal that thinks far, fights lots of men easily and does the strange. Maybe.
A greatest person may not take things away, or life, except when a number of well thinking people agree.
Persons above others but under the greatest person can do even fewer serious things.
The world began when all the bad stuff was made so and so by the first greatest person, who was a man different to all other men.
His clothes were of the color of the sun, he knew many things but not too much about any, and he was always right because he was different. You can't be different like him.
He changed the first things for the good, but not too many. He thought well.
The people should continue his work. The greatest person should continue his work.
A man should wear black when he is young and full of anger. He should carry well made things for fighting, and know how to use them well.
If the way of things is good to him and the people of away and has been want it, he will never fight.
It is alright to be sad at this.
A woman should wear fine things the color of the sun. She should read and write, know past things and go to far places to learn about them, as well as enjoy them.
If the way of things is good to her and the people of away and has been want it, she will never stop learning.
Good food is good to be concerned about. Most other things of money are not.
Feeling glad is good to be concerned about, but you can not be free from the people of away and has been.

[steorra]

I find it interesting the ways people adapt their writing when using upgoerfive-speak that aren't really required by the editor. Words they avoid even though they could use them, and ways they change sentence structure as well as vocabulary. (For example, you've said "persons" where you could have said "people", though you've also said "people" in other places; and I'm guessing that what you're expressing with "does the strange" could also be said with "does strange things".)

[mc776]

I have a strong suspicion the latter is just how Wally writes.

(Persons, though, I think has a certain individual-centered connotation that people cannot have, though my own use of persons rather than people was motivated more by legal drafting conventions than anything else)

[steorra]

"I have a strong suspicion the latter is just how Wally writes."
I wondered, in this case. However, I've seen syntactic oddities in enough other upgoerfive things that I think unusual syntax is a feature of how people tend to treat the writing format.

[helarxe]

Well, I was adapting the already stilted fantasy-y language of the original excerpt. It's strangely like dealing with translated poetry. Sp. translated Chinese poetry. I imagine the Daodejing would be rendered in a way not very dissimilar from many translations*.

Also, as a non-native, I probably have some different mental grooves, for example I prefer persons for many units of person, while people for a collective unit, because of a foreignese distinction 'pessoas'/'povo'.

I was in doubt between 'the strange' and 'the strange things' for 'magic', but the former seemed to be an uncannier usage that yet conveyed a sense of a very specific referent.

But no doubt there's also an effect of making people unconsciously decide to be more baby-talky/"simpler" than necessary.

*maybe because many translators have a vocabulary of around 1000 chinese words! :p

Part 1

What can be talked about the Way is not the Way.
What can be put in words of ideas is not the whole of the ideas.

Having no word for it, it began sky and ground.
Having no name for it, it is mother to all.

Not to want things of sense is being free in mind matters,
To want things of sense is to know the problems of normal matter.

Both mind and normal matter, so different, come from the same beginning.
This same beginning is the strange thing of strange things.
This fact is the door to quiet and amazing things.

[mc776]

...that is surprisingly indistinguishable from an ordinary translation!

Meanwhile, re: "simpler": prolonged attempts to express have resulted in lengthy explanations and elaborations of principles that were formerly concealed by terms of art and fixed expressions.

I am this close || to actually using UG5TE for work.

[steorra]

"prolonged attempts to express [things in simple language] have resulted in lengthy explanations and elaborations of principles that were formerly concealed by terms of art and fixed expressions."

There's a C. S. Lewis essay about that...

[mc776]

Which essay did you have in mind?

[steorra]

I doubt I recalled which one when I wrote the comment, and I certainly don't now, but I may be able to look it up.

Yup, after paging through my book of Lewis essays I can identify it as one called 'Before We Can Communicate'. I can't readily find it online.

[helarxe]

Appropriately...

Part 5

Sky and ground are not kind
But act as if the many things were play things.
The well thinking man is not kind
But acts as if all the families were play things.

It is surprising how the space between sky and ground
is like the inside of one of those things made so that they can be pressed to push air!
Empty but able to be used without running out,
Moving but responding.
More and more words end up meaning less and less,
Much better to be like the empty inside.


(Comment from a friend: 'Keep that up and you might make a translation of that thing that I can actually understand!')

Oh, and I was first using 'nice' for 'kind'. Baby-talk thinking getting in the way?

[helarxe]

Of course, I am using some translations that are leaving their impression. I imagine one could render some of the Bible in a way that is still recognizably the KJV, in rhythms perhaps.

Since Daoism is naturally predisposed to simplicity, for something else here's the start of chapter 5 of Sunzi, this time directly converting RD Sawyer's translation:

Usually, saying what to do for many people is like saying what to do for few people. It is a question of setting the numbers in parts. Fighting with many is like fighting with few. It is about how things are laid out and talked about.
What allows the many people of the Three Fighting Groups to always fight the other side without dying are the not normal and the normal.
If when the fighting group attacks it's like a hard thing thrown against a soft round thing that breaks easily, it is because of the empty and of the hard.
Usually, in a fight one presses through the normal and bests through the not normal. So, one who is good at sending forward the not normal is like the Sky in never running out, as without end as the two great running water ways. What reach an end and begin again are the sun and the other world that goes around us. What die and begin to live again are the four parts of the year.

[helarxe]

Finally, the beginning of Herodotus. Whole sentences came through directly. Proper nouns are hardest to circumlocute. I'm reminded of Gene Wolfe's Soldier of the Mist, which translates all place names for their etym, like calling Athens the city of Thought, Boetia, Cattle, and Sparta, Rope.

The one who tells here shows the things he learned, so the important acts of people are not forgotten in time, and great and amazing acts, some made by people of his land, some by people of worse lands, are not kept from being thought well of; and especially to show why the two peoples fought with each other.
Learned men of the great people we fought say it is the fault of this other people. This people came first from the so called Red Great Water; and as soon as they had come to our Great Water and started living in the land where they are today, they took to making long trips for buying and giving away for money. With lots of things bought from the great running water way people, and from another strong people, they stopped at many places along the water, one of them a city with a name meaning Food Land, in those days the most important place in the land that is now our land.
Here in Food Land they showed their things you can buy, and five or six days later when there were few things left, a number of women came down to the side of the water to see the place where these things were. One of these was the daughter of the highest man, and both men of my people and of the great people we fought agree on her name, and that of her father. These women were near the going over the water thing, buying what they wanted, when suddenly the men who go over water spoke between themselves and went to them quickly. Most of the women got away; but the daughter of the highest man of the place and some others were caught and taken on the going over the water thing, which went away quickly to the land of the great running water way people.
This, say the great people we fought (we have a different story), was how this woman came to the land of the great running water way people; and this was the first of many wrong acts.

[mc776]

This reads surprisingly like a lot of retellings of Native American myths in English.

[steorra]

"buy" is an allowed word.

[mc776]

::checks:: o_o

("Buyer" is not though... I suspect I only checked that.)