“Few of my correspondents manage to scale comparable heights of idleness and incompetence”Oliver Kamm dismantles a Chomskyite:

Thank you for writing. I receive, if not quite hundreds, then certainly scores of messages from people who, like you, press Chomsky's case without having first read either him or his critics. Be assured, however, that your own message is distinctive, in that few of my correspondents manage to scale comparable heights of idleness and incompetence, or at least not in the opening sentence.

Witness too his dismissal of some of Chomsky's fellow travellers in linguistics:

“I read books and talk to people about them,” she says. “Without a method?” asks Howard. “That’s right,” she says. “It doesn’t sound very convincing,” says Howard.

I thought of this exchange when considering an international symposium to be held next April at the University of Montreal under the felicitous title For a Proactive Translatology.

Translatology is the study of translation. Proactive is a gruesome synonym for anticipatory. Of this pseudoscholarly gobbledegook, one leading literary translator remarked despairingly that her own work required no proactive translatology beyond the aim of serving foreign authors and English-language readers as well as possible.

Take that, defilers of the syllabary!

Oh, and this too:

I think you should be aware that a discharged lunatic has managed to gain access to your email account and is using it to send out absurd messages in your name in an attempt to discredit you. I am forwarding an example.

I should look into this if I were you.

Blog of the Day, folks: Oliver Kamm.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:12 PM | Comments (11) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)