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Emile comments on Is an Intelligence Explosion a Disjunctive or Conjunctive Event? - Less Wrong
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Comments (15)
A note in passing while I read this: I really wish you would try and write in a plain and terse way, avoiding fancy words and constructions .... sentences like this:
... are hard to parse (does "in and of itself" correspond to a common word in German?).
(A bit that could have been skipped are those explaining infix operators)
Sorry for only commenting about the form, not the content - I'm not done reading the post yet; I find it somewhat laborious to read and am taking a breathing pause.
Huh, interesting observation.
If I encountered this straightforward German translation with the same structure in a German text:
I wouldn't even have blinked. Totally normal amount of complexity to me. These embedded explanations and minor remarks are very typical for German writing (and Japanese, as far as I can tell).
Maybe some advice to German writers: every time you want to add a comma, end your sentence instead. Yes, really.
That's a perfect translation. It is expresses exactly what I tried to state. I will think about how to rephrase it as to make it more digestable for others.
This is not meant as an excuse, just an explanation. I never learnt English in school, only the very basics (Abgangszeugnis Hauptschule Klasse 9). And I am not yet at the point where I perceive a course in formal English (or German) to be a priority. I am concentrating on learning math right now (just started with Calculus a while ago).
See the translation by muflax, "an sich" is what I am looking for. The best translations I could find are the following:
None of the above really express the German connotation though. I'll see what I can do.
I didn't do it on purpose. I will try to express myself in as simple terms as possible in future.
For what it's worth, I didn't think you were doing it on purpose - your post doesn't have the use-fancy-words-to-get-a-good-grade vibe one sometimes encounters on the 'net from people whose writing has been warped by the education system.
French writers have a similar problem of accidentally sounding too formal: many French word have a direct equivalent (cognate) that is more formal (e.g. "mortal" instead of "deadly" though in that case there's also a subtle change of meaning).
I didn't find your style to be difficult to read. The quoted sentence is fine and in no way fancy. I review and write academic papers all the time so I know bad prose when I see it.