Field Work and Fun....

Before we dive into the implementation of Text "Simplification", we need to understand the aesthetics of text "complication". We wanted to understand why writers complicate their English when their spoken English was so simple and easy to understand. For example, you can take a look at Akshatha's post which is quite complicated for a person whose foreign language is English. But you will not feel so when you speak with her! Why is that difference? 

While we were debating on this topic in our lab, our classmate Neeraj Chettri walked into the lab. He is an avid reader mostly interested in Indian politics and history. We could not have found a better subject for our experiment. (Neeraj exclaimed- "what??! you are making me a guinea pig?" ) haha! We asked him to write a few lines on any topic he wished and if you know him well then you would know what he would choose ;) Anyways he managed to write a half page essay on George Bernard Shaw which was simple and lucid. Later, we asked to him complicate the same using the online thesaurus. And what he came out with was truly remarkable! I could not deduce the meaning of few words in his sentences. He actually managed to replace every word that he could with a synonym which he thought we would not know. His essay read something like this-

" George Bernard Shaw, the magnanimous writer of the bygone century aforesaid 'Only mountaineering, boxing and racing are sports; the others are mere derisions'. He, being a man of superlative intelligence and having humongous credentials did of course camouflage a deep disposition in the above adage."

Alright. People who understood this without the help of any dictionary or thesaurus, raise your hands! Hmmm... there would not be many. So we asked him why he chose those particular words and not other available synonyms? He promptly replied that the main reason was his showmanship and he was trying to sell his writing. If not for those words, people would not be very interested to read it. Though that was one of the reasons, he argued that he would give 70% of the emphasis on his idea and 30% on his written English. Maybe or may not be! 

Let us find out.......

It would be wrong to conclude on something this early. It may vary from person to person. Thus we have planned to get our hands dirty by getting onto the field. Tomorrow is going to be a fun day at college! We are going to experiment this on people with varied backgrounds (Fyi: Bhuvan will be covering the MBA block and no!...he is not going there to check out the MBA girls ;) ). It would be interesting to see how people complicate English! 

I am all excited to try this on our lecturers in the department (except Prasad Sir of course!). Is he following this blog by any chance? :P So that is our plan so far. Follow this post for more updates :)