English as she is writ

[Greynomad]

ENGLISH AS SHE IS WRIT

From a brochure on the Italian city of Urbino, quoted in The Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson:

“The integrity and thus the vitality of Urbino is no chance, but a conservation due to the factors constituted in all probability by the approximate framework of the unity of the country, the difficulty od [sic] communications, the very concentric pattern of hill sistems [sic] or the remoteness from hi-ghly [sic] developed areas, the force of the original design proposed in its construction, with the means at the disposal of the new sciences of the Renaissance, as an ideal city even.”


Please don't bother trying to translate this into Proper English.
This is a rare occasion on which words fail me...

[T1 Terry]

Lost in translation???

[Greynomad]

T1,
It was written in English...
Well, the writer thought he was writing English.
I think it was well and truly lost before it reached the paper...

[RobertNotBob]

Was a Chinese translator.

[Greynomad]

RnB,
Please refer to my previous post...

[dream4red]

I agree with Robert not Bob, they person who wrote that gobbledlygook, works as a translator for Chinese instruction manuals.

I was taught that it is good manners to show respect to the reader, by using correct English and punctuation is what makes the writing into a story.
So the above is not a story, but gobbledygook.

[Greynomad]

Precisely, Deb,
However, as Bill Bryson said in the book where I found this gem, “If you had asked ‘Who here can speak English?’ the author’s hand would have been one of the first raised.”