Can you please review my translation into English of the
following little joke:

A programmer's mother asks her son: "Will you please go to
the drugstore and buy us some buns? And if they happen to
have eggs, then take ten." The programmer enters the
drugstore and says to the clerk:

-- Have you eggs?
-- We sure do, sir.
-- Ten buns, please.

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* Origin: nntp://news.fidonet.fi (2:221/6.0)

Re: A programmer joke
By: Anton Shepelev to All on Sat Feb 06 2021 08:02 pm

Can you please review my translation into English of the
following little joke:

A programmer's mother asks her son: "Will you please go to
the drugstore and buy us some buns? And if they happen to
have eggs, then take ten." The programmer enters the
drugstore and says to the clerk:

-- Have you eggs?
-- We sure do, sir.
-- Ten buns, please.

I think that almost perfectly says what the author is trying to convey.

Ttyl :-),
Al

... Don't blame me.. I didn't vote Conservative!
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Alan Ianson:

I think that almost perfectly says what the author is
trying to convey.

Being a perfectionist, I don't like that "almost" of yours.
For example, I had several false starts with the initial
sentence:

A programmer's mother asks her son:

Ambiguous: what if her other son is a solicitor?

Our lecturer in combinatorics used to preface every lecture
by popular jokes or her own obscure verse, depending on her
current mood. On of the jokes told about three scientists
on a train, whose respective vocations I forget. Let it be a
philospher, a mathematicial, and a statistician. Upon enter-
ing Switzerland, the statistician looks out the window and
exclaims:

S. : Looky! Sheep in this coutry are black.
Ph.: At least one sheep in this country is black.
M. : At least one sheep is black at least on one side.

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* Origin: nntp://news.fidonet.fi (2:221/6.0)

Can you please review my translation into English of the
following little joke:

A programmer's mother asks her son: "Will you please go to
the drugstore and buy us some buns? And if they happen to
have eggs, then take ten." The programmer enters the
drugstore and says to the clerk:

-- Have you eggs?
-- We sure do, sir.
-- Ten buns, please.

I understand it and, as a programmer, it got a laugh from me. :)

Mike


* SLMR 2.1a * "Criminal Lawyer" is a redundancy.
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Hi, Anton! Recently you wrote in a message to All:

Can you please review my translation into English
of the following little joke:

With pleasure. I enjoyed this joke because I'm interested in how people think & while I'm not a techie some of my favourite people are. :-))

A programmer's mother asks her son: "Will you please
go to the drugstore and buy us some buns?

The larger drugstores around here do offer a limited selection of groceries, but in most cases it does not include perishables. YMMV.... :-)

And if they happen to have eggs, then take ten." The
programmer enters the drugstore and says to the clerk:

-- Have you eggs?
-- We sure do, sir.
-- Ten buns, please.

Uh-huh. Mom speaks English the way she learned it... and doesn't know how to use techie jargon such as "if exist goto", which would have made more sense to her son. I'm reminded of how my mother politely enquired each year whether I had "a very large class". I couldn't get it through her head that as a schoolteacher I had eight or more classes of various sizes.

I am also reminded of a joke in which a woman gives her husband a shopping list with items numbered like this:

1. lettuce
2. carrots

[...]

14. milk

He returns with one head of lettuce, two carrots... plus fourteen gallons of milk. In US measurements, this would be approximately sixty litres.... :-Q




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Ardith Hinton to Anton Shepelev:

I enjoyed this joke

Great, a couple more jokes are on the way that hopefully
will not turn out old hats to you, either.

because I'm interested in how people think & while I'm
not a techie some of my favourite people are. :-))

If am a techie, then I suppose you are a teachie, although I
am not fond of eigther word.

A programmer's mother asks her son: "Will you please go
to the drugstore and buy us some buns?

The larger drugstores around here do offer a limited se-
lection of groceries, but in most cases it does not in-
clude perishables. YMMV.... :-)

Of course, it has to be a grocery store. I plumb forgot the
word and was further confused by Ilf & Petrov's 1936 account
of their journey through America, which received high praise
not only in the USSR but also in the USA. One chapter in
their travelog begins thus:

We stopped in a small town and dined at a drugstore.
[...]
The current American drugsotre is large bar with a
high counter and rotating piano stools before it.
[...]
Although the drugstore had long ago turned into a
fast-food joint, its owner has to be a pharmacist and
to possess, as it were, the scientific education abso-
lutely required for serving coffee, ice cream, toasts,
and other typical drugstore goods.

In the fatherst corner of this jolly enterpirse is a
glass case with jars, little boxes, and bottles. One
need only spend half an our in a drugstore to notice
it. In contains medicine.

But history repeats itself. One episode of The Heroes of
Corona and Arbidol has a gag where the hero says: "I went to
the Post office and bought a bottle of beer" -- this is
about modern Russia.

Here is a revised intorduction to my joke:

The mother of a programmer asks him to go down to the
grocery and buy some buns for tea. "Oh," -- she stops him
the doorway, "I plumb forgot: if they have eggs, please
take a dozen."

Does that sound/read/flow any better than my original?

Uh-huh. Mom speaks English the way she learned it...
and doesn't know how to use techie jargon such as "if
exist goto", which would have made more sense to her
son. I'm reminded of how my mother politely enquired
each year whether I had "a very large class". I
couldn't get it through her head that as a schoolteacher
I had eight or more classes of various sizes.

I do not quite understand the nature of her delusion. What
made her think you had a single class? Had it been the wont
and custom of teachers in her own time, or did she misbe-
lieve that you were still attending school?

I am also reminded of a joke in which a woman gives her
husband a shopping list with items numbered like this:

1. lettuce
2. carrots
[...]
14. milk

He returns with one head of lettuce, two carrots... plus
fourteen gallons of milk. In US measurements, this
would be approximately sixty litres.... :-Q

I must be a weak man: I can't imagine hauling this burden
back home even from the nearest grocery. Well, may be haul-
ing *is* the word -- on sledge in winter. As for me, I feel
midly reluctant to carrying as little as two 20-liter bot-
tles of drinking water, because I have to stop every now and
then in order straighten up and wipe the sweat off my fore-
head.

Your joke reminded me of another one involving enumeration:
a naked programmer was found dead the bath. The coroner cer-
tified he died of utter exhaustion. A quarter-full shampoo
bottle was clenched in his hand. The instruction on it read:

1. apply a small quantity on wet hair,
2. wash it off under running water,
3. repeat.

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* Origin: nntp://news.fidonet.fi (2:221/6.0)

Can you please review my translation into English of the
following little joke:

Ok.

You are asks eggs. After correction
You must request eggs. And only than You can do correction about buns & request buns, Anton.

Sorry! I'm newbie of translation into English, but can You send to me this joke in russian language?

/W pleasure to Anton.
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Denis Mosko to Anton Shepelev:

You are asks eggs. After correction You must request
eggs. And only than You can do correction about buns &
request buns, Anton.

I can't make either hide or hair of your advice, Denis.

Sorry! I'm newbie of translation into English, but can
You send to me this joke in russian language?

Here you are:

���� ��ࠢ��� �㦠-�ணࠬ���� � �������: "�㯨 ��⮭
嫥��, �᫨ ���� �� -- ���쬨 ����⮪." �� �����頥���
�� �������� � ������� ��⮭���:
-- �� ��祬 �⮫쪮 嫥�� �㯨�?
-- ��� ���� �� �뫨...

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