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The debate on translation and linguistic replication rages on but this should not stop the enjoyment that literal translation can give. Experts are still working on the accuracy of computer translation and here’s an example to help them decide: a translating computer was given ‘out of sight, out of mind’ to translate and in most languages, it gave words the equivalent of ‘invisible, insane’. Similarly, ‘the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak’ emerged as ‘the wine is good but the meat is spoiled’!

Most students who graduate with professional degrees do not study language after Class XII. When it is time to sit for competitive exams or appear in an interview, they get a rude shock on assessing their proficiency level. In this mad race for success, most of us forget that language is the key to our personality and calibre. So, whatever the field of choice, don’t wait for your curriculum to teach you a language. Grab every opportunity to use and polish up language, give yourself all kinds of exposure to opportunities that force you to express yourself and keep practising the four skills, exam or no exam.

‘Suitable for’ means ‘right or appropriate for a particular purpose’ as in ‘This song is not suitable for this competition’ but ‘suited to’ means ‘having the qualifications, experience or personality that make a person suitable for a situation or position’ as in ‘His interest in finance makes him better suited to a commerce course’.

Over-population often calls for unique remedies; concierge care is one such in which medical care is given with improved access and services to a patient who pays a physician an annual retainer in exchange. Another is beeper medicine or the practice of medicine by responding primarily to pages and other emergency calls. Last, but not the least is the neologism ‘hit-and-run nursing’ in which nurses attend to a greater number of patients and attempt to speed those patients through the system by performing tasks like drawing blood that were previously assigned to specialists.