Newsgroup: it.cultura.linguistica.inglese
Titolo: Come tradurre in un buon italiano...

l'espressione: "These singers, performing in tight formation without
the aid of an instrumental support..." è correttamente tradurlo con
"cantare in formazione stretta"? Grazie!
cordiali saluti
Lulu

 "cantare in formazione stretta"? Grazie!
"Tight formation" potrebbe essere sinonimo di "close harmony"? In quel
caso, io tradurrei "a parti strette" (dove strette è il contrario di
late).

 "cantare in formazione stretta"? Grazie!
I've never seen the collocation "performing in tight formation".
Is the author a native speaker?
Kiuhnm

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It is a common military description used for soldiers marching, or planes 
flying, or any formalized travel in a group. 

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Typically the term it refers to the physical closeness of their bodies in a 
group. I've never heard it used in a metaforical sense to refer to harmony. 

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"*performing* in tight formation" or "tight formation" alone?
Surprise:
http://www.google.it/search?hl=it&q=%22performing+in+tight+formation%22&btnG=Cerca&meta=
Kiuhnm

 
http://www.google.it/search?hl=it&q=%22performing+in+tight+formation%22&btnG=Cerca&meta=
If you view the cache, you can see that Galileo seems to have been talking 
about pendants, which he used to metaphorically represent musical notes. 
Leave it to Galileo, who could never say things directly. 

 Leave it to Galileo, who could never say things directly. 
Well, he was an expert of refraction phenomena...
Kiuhnm

> Well, he was an expert of refraction phenomena...
I would not say that this phrasing is incorrect, but an American native 
speaker typically would use the preposition "in" or "on".
He was an expert in refraction phenomena.
He was an expert on refraction phenomena.
He was expert in refraction phenomena.
But not "He was expert on refraction phenomena". 

Tony the Ice Man wrote:
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Ok.
Kiuhnm

On 4 Mar, 19:15, "Tony the Ice Man"
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I suppose the author mean "a cappella" that is difficult to translate.
My opinion is supported by the expression "without the aid of an
instrumental support": I think that this phrase could specify what he
write.
Thanks to all
Lulu

 write.
No, I don't think the meaning of "tight formation" has any relationship to
singing a cappella. By the way, I think you meant to write "what he writes".
Also, your use of "specify" is not standard for English. You might write, "I
think that this term (a cappella) could be what he intended."
I believe this is the full context of your source:
----------------------------------------------
Galileo Galilei set a series of pendulums in motion and watched as they
swung to and fro.  His pendants had been designed to rise and fall at
specific speeds in relation to each other, corresponding to the musical
octave (2:1), fifth (3:2), and third (5:4).  Through this mechanical ballet,
Galileo exclaimed, his eye could see, for the first time, "the same games
that the ears hear".
singers, performing in tight formation with out the aid of a musical
instrument, use none of the fixed tunings - or, rather, they alternate
between all of them in an ever-shifting search to create agreement between
their voices.  Galilei's path of discovery would carry him toward a truly
radical conculsion: that music must be freed entirely from the tyranny of
invoilable number.
Galileos claim was preposterous to Zarlino (another dude), and he attempted
to refute it by means of philisophical reasoning.  If singers contnually
distorted music's natural propotions, then true(heaven-sent) harmonic
numbers would always remain a mere potential.  "And yet we see that God and
Nature never do anything in vain.  Therefore it is necessary to say that
this potential is at some time reduced to action."  In other words, God
would never sanction a world in which the correct musical proportions were
not utilitzed.
Galileo would have none of it.  "amoung the musical intervals, those
contained outside the senario are as natural as those within it, " he wrote.
All scales are, after all, manmade.  "whether we sing the firth in the 3:2
ratio or not is of no more importance to Nature than that a crow or raven
lives three hundred or four hundred years and man only fifty or sixty."
-----------------------------------------------
When I read it, albiet quickly, I mistakenly assumed that Galileo had used
some Italian version of the term "tight formation". Part of my confusion was
encouraged by the lowercase "s" of "singer" in the second paragraph. That
judgment was not only baseless, it was also careless. It is the writer who
used the term. And, I believe he used it metaphorically, as Mr. Squash
guessed, to refer to the close tonal range of the harmony. So, "tight
formation" is not used here to refer to "a cappella" although the example
itself depends on the tonal freedom inherent in a  cappella singing.
The common usage of the term, however, does refer to a spacial relationship,
and it is most commonly used for flying or marching contexts. All you have
to do is Google search "tight formation" and a quick perusal of the 75,400
instances of use will verify that commonality.

 accompaniment."
that, which, ... I've never found a universally accepted rule...
Kiuhnm

 wrote in
news:47ce8424$0$36446$
4faf...@reader5.news.tin.it
: 
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Here's a brief guide:
 
http://www.bartleby.com/116/
Specifically this bit:
 
http://www.bartleby.com/116/205.html
Perhaps "more observed in the breach" might be closer
than "universally accepted"!
Antonio

 than "universally accepted"!
So there is something that everyone agree about!
We mustn't use "that" in non defining clauses. Some old grammars even 
forbid the use of which in defining clause.
The Oxford Dictionary recites:
"When is it correct to use that and when should you use which? The 
general rule is that, when introducing clauses that define or identify 
something (known as restrictive relative clauses), it is acceptable to 
use either that or which: a book which aims to simplify scientific 
language or a book that aims to simplify scientific language. However, 
which, but never that, should be used to introduce clauses giving 
additional information (non-restrictive relative clauses): the book, 
which costs £15, has sold a million copies not the book, that costs £15, 
has sold a million copies."
Kiuhnm

 forbid the use of which in defining clause.
You did notice that it was originally published in 1908
back when English still retained some of it's subjunctive!
(everything's gone to rack and ruin since then :-))
This bit from the same book I found quite amusing:
Chapter II. Syntax
SHALL AND WILL
IT is unfortunate that the idiomatic use, while it comes by nature to 
southern Englishmen (who will find most of this section superfluous), is so 
complicated that those who are not to the manner born can hardly acquire 
it; and for them the section is in danger of being useless.
P G Wodehouse would've been proud!
These days you'll be lucky to find anyone who cares about
the (little remaining) distinction between "that" and "which".
Hardly surprising as "whom" vs "who" seems to be on the road
to extinction too.
Antonio

 to extinction too.
You lost some nuances, but what you've got amply compensates for the loss:
- 450 new ways of saying "penis"
- 300 new ways of saying "vagina"
- some new figure of speech (the T9 "transliteration", for instance)
Kiuhnm