Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/04/03

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Subject: [Leica] British <-> American translations
From: Dave Munroe <dmunroe@vcd.hp.com>
Date: Fri, 03 Apr 1998 22:11:53 -0800

David Morton wrote:

> (I wonder when AltaVista will offer a translation service
> between American an British English? Now *that* would be useful!)


As a long time Lotus owner, I've gotten used to it :-)

One term I see a lot in the UK photo magazines is "specification"
which seems to do double duty in places where we would use either
"features" or "specifications" (colloquially, we'd actually say
"specs").  To me, the "features" are such things as mirror lock-up,
TTL metering, and so on.  However, the "specifications" are the
limits or bounds on any particular feature, e.g. for the TTL metering
feature, the specification is that it has a sensitivity of EV 0 to 19.
On the other hand, maybe I'm just not translating correctly!

So what is "naff"?  I trust that's not too desirable in a camera
system.  The closest I've been able to guess is that it means
something like "tacky", "gaudy", or "kitsch".

- -Dave