Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Such stuff as dreams are made on


This poster is popping up at bus-stops in the space meant for billboard ads. It's all very rah-rah and all, what with the Olympics starting this weekend, but am I the only one who wants to take a red pencil to it?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello, I'm feeling blur ... where are the errors? Or is it just a bit too red? (Good luck colour?)

Unknown said...

It just bugs me as a very awkward sentence construction. If it showed up in a copy I was subbing, I'd query the writer, did it mean: Make our dream come alive. Or: Give life to our dream. Or even: Bring home our dream.

When you bring something, you take it somewhere. So it feels and sounds weird to imply that you're taking the dream alive when you normally bring/take something to someplace.

I rather think that it is one of those Singaporean language things where the construction or phrasing is a direct transliteration from Chinese and so most people don't object to it or find it ungrammatical.

Anonymous said...

Ah ... I get it now. It's the Singaporean use of "bring". Just goes to show that even after all these years in Britain I still subconsciously accept "bring" being used the wrong (Singapore) way, instead of using "take".

Many thanks for BRINGING it to my attention! (Just shows that you can TAKE the girl out of Singapore, but not take Singapore out of the girl!!!).