it is extremely difficult to defuse a bomb after it has exploded, indeed!

(This sentence belongs to no one, so no one will recive your comment...)

I think “before it exploded” and “before it could explode” are not 100% the same. Maybe the German and English don’t match?

I wasn't intending this comment to anybody in particular. Just for myself...
Whether it could explose or whether it was going to, the sentence is still silly anyway. But that's OK. Tatoeba is full of these silly sentences, either the product of lazy minds or bad translations...

¨*explode

There is nothing silly about this sentence. Both live and dormant bombs can be diffused. It's second half implies that the bomb would have exploded (e.g. on it's own) had it not been defused.

Yes it is silly because an exploded bomb cannot be defused. So it is completely useless to add "before it could blow up".
"They defused the bomb" is well enough for a normal brain to comprehen that they do it before it blows up and whether it is "live" or "dormant" is irrelevant, since it may explode anyway...

*comprehend

It's repetitive, but completely natural.

Kind of like "I've already told you this before". "I've already told you this" is sufficient, but adding "before" is quite natural.

Well, then it is silly anyway...

Would you consider "They defused the bomb in time." to be silly?

Yep

@sacredceltic:

A website after your own heart:

http://www.salsburg.com/Faulty/Faulty.html

User 1832,

The tag "silly" seems strange to me.
This is a very likely way to say this in English.
(Maybe "silly" would be appropriate for one of the translations.)

the silliness was already explained and isn't dependent on the language.
It is impossible to defuse a bomb after it explodes, from whichever angle you look at it...

>> the silliness was already explained and isn't dependent on the language.
This is wrong. In Russian, «он помыл свои руки»/«he washed his hands» would be silly since it's obvious no one would wash anyone else's hands. In English, this is a natural way of speaking.

> this is a natural way of speaking.

No. It's just the wrong way of thinking.

The sentence should read : They defused the bomb.

>«he washed his hands» would be silly since it's obvious no one would wash anyone else's hands.

And it's also silly in French, so we don't say it...

Silly things should just not be uttered, whatever the language you use.
I can't see why a language would benefit from the privilege of idiocy.

> The sentence should read : They defused the bomb.
It's a perfectly acceptable sentence. But it's a different sentence.

It's not idiocy, it's redundancy, and it's a good thing. It helps to deliver the message in a noisier environment, it helps to relate the sentence to a broader context, and ultimately helps to ensure you have been heard. All languages and sentences have some degree of redundancy.

For example, consider my sentence: "It's not idiocy, it's redundancy". Redundancy is not idiocy, so is mentioning this is silly? No, because a) it helps to put the sentence in context (you were speaking about idiocy, if I just start speaking about redundancy out of sudden, I may be misunderstood), b) it delivers a background message "redundancy is not idiocy" (which I reinforce later by mentioning the virtues of redundancy, but it's important enough to put it in the first sentence).

The same reasons can make sentence "They defused the bomb before it could blow up" better than "They defused the bomb" in some contexts. Since we don't have the context, it's hard to argue which one is better.

But this is by no means idiocy.

What I was trying to say is that it is not silly to have sentences that show how language is actually used. If one of the translations is silly, then tag that sentence, not the English one.

Try this Google search for multiple examples.
"(defuse|defused|defuses|defusing) the bomb before it"

http://www.google.com/search?q=...b+before+it%22

The "silly" tag doesn't bother me, I can just ignore it.
However, it could be misleading for someone who is just learning the language and thinks a native English speaker would think this is a silly sentence.

>> If one of the translations is silly, then tag that sentence,
>> not the English one.
sacredceltic does believe the English sentence is silly.

>It helps to deliver the message in a noisier environment,

?!? Because you are in a noisy environment, you need losing your brains ? Gosh !

>What I was trying to say is that it is not silly to have sentences that show how language is actually used.

It's nothing to do with language. It's to do with logic. Or do you want to mean that idiocy is permitted in English more than in other languages ?
Interesting view...

>The "silly" tag doesn't bother me, I can just ignore it.

Then do. It indicates just what it is.

>it could be misleading for someone who is just learning the language and thinks a native English speaker would think this is a silly sentence.

Then it's not misleading...because I know English speakers who would find this sentence silly the same way I do...

>sacredceltic does believe the English sentence is silly.

I actually translated it and also tagged my translation the same way.

Again, this is not a linguistic problem.

You're arguing with things I've never said, but say nothing about real arguments (redundancy in inherent to human language and it's good).

I cannot argue with you if you don't even try to understand my replies.

Good luck fighting windmills.

I don't think that the tag silly serves any purpose. I have removed it. We don't need tags that are "judgmental". One of the best decisions was getting rid of the "controversial" tag, since it generated more controversy than anything else on the website. Granted, there was only a very small group of users generating that controversy, but that's another matter...

So let's not recreate another tag similar to the "controversial" one. It will only engender endless arguments.

>Good luck fighting windmills.

I'm not fighting, YOU do. I merely tag.

>since it generated more controversy than anything else on the website

Because some people want to raise contraversies with it. I do not. I just want to attract the attention of the people to the fact that this sentence is plain silly, because it is.

> I have removed it

Well, then put it back, because you're reasons for removing it are unconvincing. This sentence is silly and that's that !

>So let's not recreate another tag similar to the "controversial" one. It will only engender endless arguments.

The tag "OK" is controversial, in this case. This sentence is not "OK" from a logical point of view. So remove it as well if you remove mine...

The "OK" tag only says that this sentence is grammatically OK. It doesn't say whether it's logical or not.

I have a question for you, sacredceltic... you wrote in your profile:

3) Je ne traduis pas les phrases que je trouve idiotes, niaises, inutiles, redondantes, et en particulier celles comportant des prénoms, des noms de lieux, de pays et de villes, des distances et des mesures si j'estime qu'elles n'ont pas une valeur ajoutée remarquable au corpus Tatoeba.

Why did you translate this one?
http://tatoeba.org/eng/sentences/show/471779

I translated it and tagged it "silly", but you just removed the tag...

> I translated it and tagged it "silly", but you just removed the tag...

It wasn't me...

>The "OK" tag only says that this sentence is grammatically OK.

Says who ? Then it is misleading.

But anyway, in my country, an illogical sentence is not considered "grammatical"...

@alexmarcelo

sorry, I thought I was writing to Scott...

> But anyway, in my country, an illogical sentence is not considered "grammatical"...
Most languages aren't logical.
In Spanish, many times we feel unconfortable saying things that don't sound logical, but we just agree, hey, that's how we understand each other.

Would you agree on tagging "Silly" to every double-negated sentence in languages like Spanish or Afrikaans?

As far as I know, no language is any sort of intrincated web of logical or axiomatic atoms, but all the opposite.

Absolutely, language is often illogical. Here are some examples I found with a quick search:
Why do performers recite a play, yet play at a recital?
When the stars are out they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.
Why do our noses run but our feet smell?
He filled in his form by filling it out.

>Would you agree on tagging "Silly" to every double-negated sentence in languages like Spanish or Afrikaans?

Yes, definitely. A double-negation is definitely silly. Why not triple, then ?

>Why do performers recite a play, yet play at a recital?
When the stars are out they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.
Why do our noses run but our feet smell?
He filled in his form by filling it out.

These examples have nothing to do with logic, but with the fact that some words or phrases are ambiguous.

I vote for tagging it as "tautology" or "redundancy", but I consider "silly" to be a bit too strong. About Spanish double negation, well, I wouldn't consider them as tautology or silly because it's simply how this language works and if you tag them that way, you might mislead the students since they may think that they can say it without one of these negations.

@Shishir

I'm not sufficiently expert in Spanish to judge. But I know that in English, double negations are a sign of non-education.
You may argue that sentences by uneducated people are valid sentences, but then that would open the Pandora box that bad spellings should also be part of the language and then, where is the limit ? Is any bad combination of letters typed by a monkey a valid sentence ?
Tatoeba is supposed to provide example sentences. How exemplary are misspellings, redundancies and tautologies ? Exemplary of what ?
Language is supposed to ease communication. When communication is illogical, it leads to complete misunderstanding. Double negations are just puzzling. They don't help communication at all, they encrypt it. I see no point in defending them as exemplary of anything valuable.
If in certain circumstances, negations in Spanish actually are half negations and they need to be 2 to form a complete negation (such as the French « ne...pas », then I see no problem with that. But that's a different issue.
Here, bombs cannot be defused after they blow up. This sentence is just plain silly.

Actually in Spanish sometimes we have both options: to write it as a double negation or to put the negation at the beginning of the sentence (specially when the words "never", "no-one", "nothing",... appear in a sentence -> nadie lo ha hecho / no lo ha hecho nadie = nobody has done it, but you can't say "lo ha hecho nadie"); and well, about those sentences that repeat twice the same information, I think there's a clear difference between the incorrect sentences written by uneducated people and those that anyone could use. In the second case, I still vote for tagging them as tautology, and this sentence, having been supported by native English speakers that I believe to be educated, should belong to the second. By tagging it as tautology, we're already indicating that a part of the sentence could be omitted without losing information.
Also, you know how English works, if an incorrect sentence is used by enough people it will end up being correct...

>Also, you know how English works, if an incorrect sentence is used by enough people it will end up being correct...

I know. But English doesn't rule logic, hopefully !

In any case, I find the "OK" tag here, without further indication, to be misleading...

Meh, I don't really want to get involved in this mess, but the sentence sounds perfectly fine to me.

It's just the same as saying
"They defused the bomb in time." (35 Google hits for 'defused the bomb in time' btw)
There's no way to defuse a bomb not-in-time but it is still something that people would naturally say in English.

In fact if you look for "defused the bomb before" on Google you will find a whole bunch of hits (around 100 valid ones).

>Meh, I don't really want to get involved in this mess

But you do anyway...

>(35 Google hits for 'defused the bomb in time' btw)

who cares for Google hits ? Anything has google hits. "Elvis is alive" has 200.000, if you are interested...

>> "Elvis is alive" has 200.000, if you are interested...
"Elvis is alive" is perfectly grammatical, logical and understandable to everybody with a little bit of common sense. It's a wonderful example of metaphor.

Most things on Google raw results are irrelevant to grammar...They're mainly indexed from web-shops, whose texts have been entered by low-education shopkeepers and from forums for illiterate geeks...Google indexes more shit on a daily basis than grammatical sentences.
To use Google raw results as a grammatical reference is to not understand what a reference is.

I see nothing silly in "They defused the bomb before it could blow up." For the simple reason that no one know whether the bomb could actually explode or not. All we know that they defused it and there were no explosion.
By the way, to add some oil to the fire, in Russian, my native language, this sentence doesn't look silly either. Moreover, silly and illogical sentences are considered grammatical in Russian provided they don't contain grammatical mistakes. And one thing more about double negation. Not only double negation is acceptable in Russian, it's also widely used both in colloquial and literary language.