NavList:

I hope that in the spirit of the New Year I may be forgiven for lightly commenting about a linguistic slip.

Peter wrote:

<Pourquoi faire simple lorsque, avec tellement peu plus d'effort, l'on peut faire compliquer..."
with a query: "Why this passion for writing in French on an English language forum Peter?"
I'm a man of many passions. No, its because this phrase keeps intruding unbidden into my consciousness during many NavList discussions, and for once I've not resisted its allure, or the temptation to share it with you.
"... writing it in English would have taken up less space..."
Well, let's see. Why do things in a simple way, when with such little extra effort they can be rendered infinitely more complicated...>

The quotation sounds like something that has been translated, badly, into French from an English original. The grammar is uncertain. The euphonic "l'" before the "on" is redundant and the infinitive "compliquer" should be the adjective "complique" (with an e-acute). The whole thing does not read like natural French.

Peter's back-translation is inaccurate. There is no "infinitely" or "more", so I offer: "Why make things simple when, with so little extra effort, they can be made complicated?"

The original was, I think: "There is no small, simple task that cannot with thought and effort be made into a large and difficult one", to which I would like to add: "For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, direct - and wrong."

Bonne annee!

Bill Morris
Grande-Colline (Pukenui)
Nouvelle-Zelande (New Zealand, but you all knew that, didn't you)
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