Sokath, his eyes uncovered [1]

[cellio]

One of the things that's hard about learning English from the outside (and, I presume, hard about other languages) is how much of common usage is idiom and analogy. This thought came to mind during a meeting today with exchanges like the following (in fairly rapid succession):

Developer: What about $problem?
Tech Lead: We'll burn that bridge when we come to it.

Developer: Are you saying the build manager is God?
Developer 2: Watch out for the lightning bolts.
Developer: We'll burn that bush when we come to it.

Product Manager: Ok, we'll include your feature in the product but only as a secret alpha-release utility.
Developer: So it's in the product, but I can't fix bugs.
PM: Right.
Developer: I feel like the white trash with the half-built cars on the overgrown lawn.
PM: True, and you're in my neighborhood now. Maybe I should rethink that.

Maybe you had to be there.

[1]

Comments

[chaos-wrangler.livejournal.com]

Okay, but then (as I said) each phrase should have translated as a word or two without all the internal structure, since the speakers would have learned it that way. My problem was that the speakers seemed to know about the internal structure (so the translator picked it up) but were unable to use it or understand the humans' use of it.