praoti cableness

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mshields

mshields

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just noticed this term, possible typo in a guide form spec I'm working off of for Overhead Distribution. The sentence it is used in is as follows:

"The contractor is responsible for verifying the praoti cableness of the location, notifying the engineer in any instances where not the case, and not proceeding until given direction by same."

I assume its a typo but can't guess what it was supposed to say. Any idea's?
 
mshields said:
just noticed this term, possible typo in a guide form spec I'm working off of for Overhead Distribution. The sentence it is used in is as follows:

"The contractor is responsible for verifying the praoti cableness of the location, notifying the engineer in any instances where not the case, and not proceeding until given direction by same."

I assume its a typo but can't guess what it was supposed to say. Any idea's?
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English as a second language, maybe? I have read manuals (or tried to) for Chinese and Japanese manufactured audio equipment that were likewise impenetrable.
 
ggunn said:
English as a second language, maybe? I have read manuals (or tried to) for Chinese and Japanese manufactured audio equipment that were likewise impenetrable.
Click to expand...

Not really likely this time. I think that an unnoticed typo is a much more practicable explanation.

Had a 1965 Nissan pickup with a very complete user's manual in Japanglish.

It even had troubleshooting for engine problems.
If the engine idled OK but lost power on acceleration, check the grass ball. (Glass bowl, as in fuel filter.)
And other rough running could be the result of too high oil level in the carburetor. (That one really got me until I found out in an unrelated investigation that Japanese uses one word for oil and for gasoline fuel. They were talking about the carburetor bowl float level. )
Other oddities were more cultural than translation. To preserve the appearance of the paint you needed to clean the car daily with a feather duster.
 
GoldDigger said:
Not really likely this time. I think that an unnoticed typo is a much more practicable explanation.
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Maybe, but typos are usually a single (or few) incorrect, extra, or omitted character(s). I can't think of any simple change that results in what was in the OP making sense.
 
mshields said:
just noticed this term, possible typo in a guide form spec I'm working off of for Overhead Distribution. The sentence it is used in is as follows:

"The contractor is responsible for verifying the praoti cableness of the location, notifying the engineer in any instances where not the case, and not proceeding until given direction by same."

I assume its a typo but can't guess what it was supposed to say. Any idea's?
Click to expand...

Yes, it appears to be a text reader error.

If search 'praoti' Google brings you to this page:

https://books.google.com/books?id=p...ved=0ahUKEwiV-bDv77_SAhWBx4MKHV1KCJEQ6AEIPzAI

It points to the definition of practicable, and because it's a photocopy of an old book, looks like prao-ti-cable
 
ggunn said:
Maybe, but typos are usually a single (or few) incorrect, extra, or omitted character(s). I can't think of any simple change that results in what was in the OP making sense.
Click to expand...
"Practicablness", then substitute an "o" for the "c" as the first typo, then because the word still isn't recognized by Speel Chequer, someone likely decided to try splitting it up into two words, one of which then at least appeared somewhat valid (cableness) to a non-technical data entry person. But to my mind, this still smacks of an ESL based issue because of that 2nd step.

Brought back some fond memories of my wife and I laughing over the absurdity of things like this. 30 years ago she worked as a Paste-Up Artist for a publishing company, a job that is now almost completely gone because of Desktop Publishing software. She worked on a lot of technical manuals for the military and would come across things like this all the time. She'd write down technical words and bring them home to me to see if they sounded right or if I could figure out what was being attempted, but she couldn't bring me anything in context (because she was looking on classified documents), so it was kind of a fun game to try to 2nd guess how they ended up like this. It was a bit scary, because many of the manuals she was working on were for things like war planes such as the A-10 "Warthog". One that I remember laughing about was the "Refuting" procedure, which was easy to decipher as "Refueling" but left me wondering if it had made it to print, what would have happened...
Pilot: "I'm getting low on fuel"
Flight Command: "Please follow the Refuting procedure"
Pilot:" "Roger that. I have plenty of fuel."
 
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