quotation from one language into English [closed]
Closed by System on Nov 29, 2017 at 17:32
This question was closed; new answers can no longer be added. Users with the reopen privilege may vote to reopen this question if it has been improved or closed incorrectly.
“One should try to invite people from this world to eternity, from sin to obedience, from greediness to asceticism, from jealousness to generosity, from duplicity to honesty, from insolence to modesty, from negligence to awakening, and from arrogance to virtue.” Can anyone edit or correct it, please? Is the sentence logical enough in terms of grammar or not?
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/31728. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
1 answer
As a native English speaker and writer, I do not find this logical because the word pairings are not antonyms (opposites) or related.
"from this world to eternity" does not make sense to me as a travel plan, 'eternity' is not a PLACE. "this world to paradise" might make sense, it implies from one PLACE to another PLACE.
"from sin to obedience": These are not opposites or mutually exclusive. What if I am ordered to rape a child, wouldn't that be a sin? The opposite of "obedience" is "defiance", and neither are necessarily good or bad. The opposite of a "sin" is "virtuosity", I should think.
Others that don't make sense (I take these opposites off the top of my head, I did not look them all up. You can google 'antonym xxx' and find a list of possibilities, but be careful. 'obedience' is listed as an antonym of 'sin', but in general it is NOT: 'obedience to scripture' or 'obedience to religious law' would work, but not obedience in general, because 'sin' is necessarily a religious concept.)
"greediness to asceticism": The opposite of greedy is generosity, the opposite of asceticism is luxury.
"Jealousy to Generosity": The opposite of "jealous" or "envious" is not Generosity; the only opposite I can think of is "indifferent" (a lack of jealousy) or perhaps "amicable". The opposite of jealousy is being happy for the good fortune of somebody that has something (or someone) you would want for yourself. So I can be jealous if my neighbor wins a million dollars in the lottery, or I may not care, or I may be happy for them. None of these emotional states are accurately described by "generosity".
"Insolence to modesty": The opposite of "modest" is "assured", or perhaps "arrogant". Arrogance is not necessarily "Insolence". The opposite of "Insolent" is "Polite", but this does not imply "modest". IRL I am a professor, I can be polite without being modest: I know more than my students, I KNOW that I know more than they do, and I have no problem TELLING them that. I am not "modest" in the classroom, I am self-confident and assured, but I am never "insolent" (insulting, abusive, disdainful).
"negligence to awakening": The opposite of negligence is attentiveness. it is not "sleeping", and negligence is something for a person already awake and shirking their duties of ensuring they cause no harm. The opposite of "awakening" is "unawareness", which is not negligence: To be negligent a person must know the right thing or way to do things, and ignore those to save themselves time or effort or money. Simply being unaware of the right thing is ignorance, not negligence.
"arrogance to virtue": Addressed above; these are not opposites, it makes no sense to go from one to the other when they can both be true at the same time! A devout priest can still be arrogant in his knowledge of his scripture (whatever it may be) and all the scholarly interpretations of it. In many religions "arrogance" is not a sin.
We do not edit on this site, we provide advice. We won't write it for you. My advice is to be more careful with matching your words: If you want to go from "X" to "Y", then it should be impossible to be "X" and "Y" simultaneously! If it IS possible, than nothing has to change.
A more obvious example of what you are doing, to help clarify the problem, is imploring people to go "from fat to funny". A person can be fat and funny, it happens often. A person can go from "fat to fit", or "sullen to funny", but it makes no sense to implore anyone to go from "fat to funny".
0 comment threads
0 comment threads