…what language was that translated from? That’s all I could think of when I read this article on GE’s move to sell off its financial unit. Take this sentence:
Given that GE is taken into consideration a systemically vital economic establishment, the action will certainly make it based on federal government policy, yet GE stated it would put on prevent that oversight in 2016.
Could that sentence have been written by a native speaker of English? It looks like a bad machine translation. Or this
GE Chief Executive Officer Jeff Immelt informed financiers that the firm is attempting to create 90 percent of its make money from commercial procedures within the following couple of years.
Or this
The brand-new restructuring strategy would certainly consist of redeeming around $50 billion of its shares and also marketing $30 billion in property possessions over 2 years, and also divesting a lot more GE Capital procedures, baseding on a Reuters guide.
Maybe that’s just a typo. Or this:
This technique will certainly assist substantially raise productivity by 2018, GE authorities claimed in a teleconference from experts. While GE Capital will certainly view its revenues come by 25 cents each share, the stock buybacks ought to aid balance out that, they stated.
And I have no idea what this sentence means:
General Electric Co. is dilating its financing device as well as returning $90 billion to investors as it looks for to come to be a much more concentrated commercial company.
I’ve heard that there was a movement to have more news copy actually written by computer programs. If this is an example, maybe more of the copy should be read by computer programs, too.
So, what’s the explanation? Illiteracy? Machine translation? Written by a computer program? Spellchecker run amok?
Computer transcription of oral speech — perhaps from a reporter calling in on his cell phone — with no subsequent proof reading.
What the news story as a whole tells me is that what GE might wish to say “officially” about their reasons for closing GE Financial Services isn’t of great interest to anyone. The impact on investors, from buying back shares and the like, is what matters to people reading this story, and a handful of catch phrases (“shares leapt…” “money from commercial procedures….” “redeeming ,,, shares” “marketing … property possessions” etc.) is sufficient to convey the information brokers and financial types might actually care about.
FWIW, liberal bloggers reporting this mostly talk about GE responding to Dodd-Frank requirements. Which shows what sort of stuff interests their readers ….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyV_UG60dD4
It’s more than “liberal bloggers”, mike. A frequent commenter here, far from liberal, was the first to bring this story to my attention. His take was much the same: it’s a reaction to Dodd-Frank.
Yes, Andy. It does have a lot of buzz words and double-talk. But it’s worse than that. In some places whole phrases are missing. In others extraneous phrases have been inserted. It doesn’t follow the rules of oral English let alone written English.
When did Maria Harf start doing financial reporting?
That entire website is written that way. It reminds me of “Engrish” so my first thought was that it was written by non-native English speakers. But on further exploration, I noticed that at least some of the articles appear lifted from AP reports with some phrases transposed. Here’s one example of an article from the site and the corresponding AP piece:
http://www.observerchronicle.com/ap-news-in-historic-face-to-face-obama-castro-vow-to-turn-the-page/1864/
http://hosted2.ap.org/ORBEN/07e34bb59e064cedb7e2776e8db4b4f7/Article_2015-04-11-Summit-United%20States-Cuba/id-5dc35d850b9547119c2a57ad76f7d15d#.VSpqtrK9KSM
Maybe it is done by a computer, making substitutes to avoid copyright infringement and churn out a news site for advertising revenue?