[texhax] (OT) English native speaker needed -- translation problem

[Alan T Litchfield]

On 7/04/2011, at 1:52 AM, Haines Brown wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 06, 2011 at 03:13:16PM +0200, Susan Dittmar wrote:
>> Hi folks!
>>
>> I need help with a small matter of how to phrase something  
>> "correcly".
>> It will be part of a highly official document, and I feel quite
>> uncomfortable with the translation we paid for with respect to this  
>> little
>> thing. I am sure one of you can help me.
>>
>> How would one write---as short as possible---"on page 31 and those
>> following"?
>>
>> In German, this would be "Seite 31 ff".
>
> Susan, I understood your question a little differently than the
> replies you've received so far. If it is how to say "on page 31 and
> those following" as briefly as possible without abbreviations, then it
> could be "on page 31 and following". Your translation seems to be good
> English, but the "those" seems a bit unconventional and redundant. It
> also appears to be conventional to reduce it in some contexts even
> more as ", 31 and following", with "on page" implied, but I'm not sure
> of its propriety in formal English. I'm a native American "English"
> speaker.
>

Around here, it would be "from page 31" or "page 31 onwards." It is  
about as short as is meaningfully possible.

> There seems to be no consensus on whether in English numbers should be
> written out rather than expressed as digits. One rule is that any
> number after ten or twelve should be written out, but there's another
> convention that says that any number that can be conveyed by one or
> two words should be written out: "thirty one". But if brevity is the
> goal, then there seems nothing wrong with "31". However, my impression
> is that in legal documents, it would be written out.

Interesting, I always thought it was around the other way. That  
numbers less than 10 were spelled out and those larger were  
enumerated. That in legal documents they were typically both,  
regardless of value, spelled out then enumerated in parentheses.

Alan

--
Alan T Litchfield
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