"marrows"?!!!

[redbird]

Every so often I hit a sentence in this job that makes no sense. cattitude suggested I preserve this one for history:

It is a precious treasure as well as rare opportunity in our professional life to work together with leaders of the industry and borrow marrows from master-hands for each of us.

The problem phrase is in red.

Comments

...In which the beef of victory, was mix'd with the foul turnip of King Richard slain...

[treadpath.livejournal.com]

That is really marvellously odd! After reading it a couple times, my interpretation is that it is attempt at a metaphor: the skills that are borrowed are like the core of the bones of the master's hands. Sort of a really weird play on "master-hands" being both the person who has mastered the skill and also the master's physical hands... is this a translation from another language? Reminds me a little of a wonderful little book called "English As She is Spoke" which is a Portuguese to English phrasebook, made possible by a gentleman who used a Portuguese-French dictionary to translate a French-English phrasebook. It used to be on the internet but the link is broken now. Pity. It contained such gems as the common English expression "to craunch the marmoset." If it goes up again I will be sure to send you the link.

Re: ...In which the beef of victory, was mix'd with the foul turnip of King Richard slain...

[redbird]

It's a bad translation from Chinese. My job (at 3.5 cents/word) is to make it into readable English.

Re: ...In which the beef of victory, was mix'd with the foul turnip of King Richard slain...

[treadpath.livejournal.com]

Sweet! I'm sure it will be better than readable when you're done with it. You're one of the smartest people I know! :)

Re: ...In which the beef of victory, was mix'd with the foul turnip of King Richard slain...

[redbird]

*grin*

It's not quite GIGO, but it's hard to make really good silk purses out of sows' ears.

Re: ...In which the beef of victory, was mix'd with the foul turnip of King Richard slain...

[treadpath.livejournal.com]

GIGO? Please for to explain for the acronym-deficient? Please?

True about the difficulty regarding the transmutation of silk from porcine auditory apparatus, but some good sleight of hand could possibly make it appear as if you pulled a silk purse _out_ of a sow's ear.

I still think that, if it can be done, you can certainly do it, and very well also. And it sounds like an interesting challenge to boot. :)

Re: ...In which the beef of victory, was mix'd with the foul turnip of King Richard slain...

[snippy]

GIGO=garbage in, garbage out.

I think scientists did make a silk purse from a sow's ear, just to prove it could be done...although I may be mixing that up with the goats that have spider genes and excrete spider silk in their milk.