LogFAQs > #928669317

Alright, let's take a look:

"I want to take a few minutes to talk to all of you about the Hearthstone Grandmasters tournament this past weekend."

SVO.

"talk you tournament" is...I guess indirect object before the object

"past weekend" "few minutes"-- this is adjective before the noun, whereas mandarin would be "weekend past" "minutes few".

Ehh...there's just nothing weird about this sentence, feels normal to me.

"On Monday, we made the decision to take action against a player named blitzchung and two shoutcasters after the player shared his views on whats happening in Hong Kong on our official broadcast channel."

OK, so a few things grammatically feel weird--sentence is long and rambly, and IDK why there's a comma after Monday. I don't really think any of this implies translation, though. Looking at other J Allen Brack writing, he throws around commas like they're candy so seems legit.

SVO "we made decision", "[we] take (action against) player", "player shared views".

No real adjectives or adverbs to look at ("official broadcast channel", oh man)

So...none of the markers I was looking for. I will note that the compounding is an unusual choice, though. "we made the deicision to take action" instead of "we took action". Still perfectly sensible English.

"At Blizzard, our vision is to bring the world together through epic entertainment."

The use of quotations here is one thing the twitter user called out. Not a smoking gun by any means, but weird I guess. Here's what he wrote in February "One thing that remains constant: we are committed to creating epic games and entertainment experiences. "

SVO "[our vision] is [stuff]"

Honestly short sentence, not much here.

"And we have core values that apply here: Think Globally; Lead Responsibly; and importantly, Every Voice Matters, encouraging everybody to share their point of view."

What the? Why are there semicolons instead of commas after Think Globally, Lead Responsibly? Like...I can see why if someone had this in a word processor, the word processor might put a red underline and tell you to add a semicolon. "Think Globally" is technically a complete sentence. But in this context it's an object, enumerating core values.

I checked J Allen Brack's past writing, he never used a semicolon. So...I mean, yeah, this is weird.

Starting the sentence with And...why hello there King James Bible. Yeah, this is a bit odd--not something he's in the habbit of doing looking at his past writing.

One thing that suggests against a translation here, though, is capitalization of all the core values. Capitalizing random words in sentences is something I do All The Time And It Drives Some Of My Friends Crazy. But if you're just shoving it through a translator you'll lose all the capitalization every time.

SVO "we have [core values]". "everybody to share [their point of view]"

Not a lot of adjectives or adverbs to work with "core values"--not going to mess that up.

"The actions that we took over the weekend are causing people to question if we are still committed to these values."

OSV "[the actions that] we took" -- this is a construction that does not exist in mandarin as far as I know.

SVO "[actions...] are causing people"

---------

Ehhh...alright, well, it's weird for sure, particularly in the punctuation, might be translated from something, but I don't see much that suggests Mandarin in particular.
---

Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision