All well and good for disagreement between experts on a field like the origin
of the Universe at (at which neither was present and it is all theory with
experimental evidence to [possibly] back up the theory), but in this case, it is
a field which has been devised and developed here in a subject field that
requires exactness - a computer will do exactly what it is told, but whether
what it is told to do is what was intended is another matter. So if there is a
disagreement over the semantics and meaning of a phrase then either the phrase
has not been properly defined in the first place, or (more likely) the phrase is
being used incorrectly. Lawyers taking technospeak and converting it into
leagalese for a patent is a sure fire way of getting phrases misinterpreted,
especially when converted back into technospeak for the patent to be used by
someone skilled in the technological area to which the invention pertains,
or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the
same.
An [amazing] example is Babel fish's translation from French
to English, and back again, of the [idiomatic] phrase for heavy rain. It starts
by translating the French idiom "Il pleut des hallebardes" correctly into the
English idiom "It is raining cats and dogs", but it translates this back into
the French as "Il pleut des chats et des chiens".
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