[blml] Wording of the laws

[Konrad Ciborowski]

While working on the Polish version of the new laws I have
come to a certain observation of the languange and wording
of the laws. 

The laws rely heavily on some certain subtle nuances of meaning
of words in English. Sometimes quite subtle. For instance
the meaning of words like "likely" or "probable" when
these words are on their own is quite
different than when they come in phrases like "at all likely" 
or "at all probable".

This difference is critical for understanding and translation
of some crucial laws, like law 12. I checked three versions
of the laws: Polish, French and Russian. In two of them
(Polish and French) the relevant laws don't match the 
original laws because whoever did the translation failed to 
grasp the subtle differences.

For instance:

"the most favourable result that was likely had the
irregularity not occurred."

Polish version: the most favorable result that that non-offending
side could have obtained had the irregularity not occurred.

This is not the same as the most favorable result that
was _likely_ - the requirement of the result being
likely disappeared.

In the French version they got this one right but they
got the next one wrong:

"the most unfavourable result that was at all probable."

In the Polish version this one is translated correctly but
the French version reads:

the offending side obtains the unfavorable result that
is the most probable (le résultat défavorable le plus probable).

Not quite the same. If one has a choice between 4S -2 (40% chance
in the TD's assessment) or 4S -3 (15% chance) that according
to the French version the offenders get 4S -2.


Now let's take a look at L70C:

"it is at all likely that claimer at the time of his 
claim was unaware that a trump remained in an opponent’s hand"

Polish version: the claimer was probably unaware that a trump 
remained in an opponent’s hand 

Not exactly the same thing - the Polish version requires
moch stronger condition to be fulfilled.

French version: there exists a remote chance that the
claimer at the time of his claim was unaware that a trump remained 
in an opponent’s hand 

Here "la moindre probabilité" is required, a remote possibility,
which sounds like a much weaker requirement to me.

Of course - one can easily blame the authors of the translations
(for instance the Russian version was dead right in all cases).

But I have a strong suspicion that in many other versions of laws
these subtle differences might not have been caught.

So instead of relying of non-native speakers being able to feel
different shades of meanings of words (on top of that we have
a slight discrepancy between the meaning of "likely" in
British English and in American English - how many people
do you think are aware of that?) it might be a much
better idea to simply quantify certain laws (for instance
"in the TD's there is 10% chance that...") or at least
use simpler English.




-- 
Konrad Ciborowski
Kraków, Poland

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