Glossary entry

English term or phrase:

to show your institute

English answer:

to demonstrate to your institute (that you are a management trainee...)

Added to glossary by Charles Davis
Oct 26, 2013 20:06
10 yrs ago
English term

to show your institute

English Art/Literary Cinema, Film, TV, Drama
Hello everyone,

- Did you make this report?
- Yes.
- If this report is accurate, according to it....the company made so much money last month....that we need not work for the next 30 years.
- What?
- What is going on, Ritu? If the first figure of the analysis is wrong....the ensuing result will be wrong at every level.
I am shocked. You finished a 15-page report....and couldn’t even figure the error.
- Actually, dad.. Sorry, dad, Sorry, sir.
- ***Just to show your institute....you are a management trainee in my company. Because other firms won’t even consider you.. ..for the post of a peon. Due to your low scores in last semester. Learn a thing or two while you’re here.
- I am learning, sir.

Does "Just to show your institute" mean "In order for you to show what you have learnt in the institute"?

Or does it mean "In order for you to impress your institute"?

Thank you.
Change log

Oct 30, 2013 20:39: Charles Davis Created KOG entry

Discussion

B D Finch Oct 28, 2013:
Mission Impossible! If you are trying to translate this into Russian, may I suggest that you revert to the client and tell them that the source translation is so bad that there is no way you can produce a sensible translation from it. It needs to be retranslated from the source, Hindi, script.
Tony M Oct 26, 2013:
Very poor English To be honest, this English is so poor, it's hard to work out what on earth they even might have been trying to say.

I don't think your first suggestion is the most likely... unless, of course, the ellipsis is intended to imply that the thought continued "... just to show (that) your institute hasn't taught you anything!"

I think your second suggestion is probably closer, though I suspect not with the intention of 'impressing' them; I suspect the idea might be 'just to show your institute that when all's said and done, you are no more than a trainee'

But like I said at the start, the EN is so poor (surely non-native?) that it is hard to be sure of anything. Maybe your wider overall context will give you more clues for you to be able to work things out — at least I hope so, for your sake! ;-)

Then again, he does say "in MY company", contrasting it with "other firms" — so maybe there is an idea of making it clear to the institute that s/he is only there on suffrance because it is his father's company.

Responses

1 hr
Selected

to demonstrate to your institute (that you are a management trainee...)

I am reposting this, because I have realised that in my first answer I gave away the source, which may be confidential.

The English is a little strange to the ear of a native speaker. This is from a film made in a country where many people speak English, but generally not as their first language.

So the ellipsis is there because it is laid out as a film script:

"00:14:19 Just to show your institute...
00:14:21 ...you are a management trainee in my company."

(I found this on the Internet. I won't post the url because it reveals the name of the film.)

In a script, an ellipsis at the end of one line and the beginning of the next indicates that they follow on without a break. So there is no pause after "institute", and indeed the timings confirm this.

So "Just to show your institute you are a management trainee in my company" is one continuous sentence, with nothing omitted and no pause. When we see it like this, I think it is clear that it means "Just to show your institute THAT you are a management trainee in my company". Ritu, the boss's daughter, is a student at a management institute. She has done this report, which has turned out so disastrously, in order to show it to her institute -- the institute where she is studying -- so as to demonstrate that she is a trainee in the company. I presume that she is expected to get work experience for her course and to provide evidence of the work she is doing. She has done the report for that purpose. From what her father says she would have difficulty finding a placement other than in the family firm. (But it doesn't matter that she's no good with figures, because of course she will marry the hero and live happily ever after.)


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Note added at 10 hrs (2013-10-27 06:40:35 GMT)
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I am sure that "Just to show your institute" does not mean "Just to impress your institute" here, even if, as Piyush says, that is a direct translation of a Hindi phrase.

Of course, that idea is implicit, in any case: by showing the report to her teachers at the institute, Ritu presumably hopes to impress them. However, "show" can't mean "impress" here. For that to be the meaning, we have to assume that "Just to show your institute" stands in isolation, as a single sentence, and that "you are a management trainee in my company" is a separate sentence. "Show" cannot mean "impress" if "Just to show your institute you are a management trainee in my company" is a single continuous sentence, because if that is the case, then "you are a management trainee in my company" has to be the object of "show": it has to be what Ritu is intending to show the institute. Otherwise it would be syntactically unconnected to "Just to show your institute".

As I have explained, this must be a continuous sentence, because if the two parts were separate sentences, there would be no ellipses in the script; it would read like this:

00:14:19 Just to show your institute.
00:14:21 You are a management trainee in my company.

Since it is not set out like that, it must be a continuous sentence, which means that "show" must mean "demonstrate", and what is demonstrated is the fact that she is a management trainee in the company.
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4 KudoZ points awarded for this answer. Comment: "Many thanks to everyone. Thank you, Charles."
3 hrs

to make a good impression on your institute

Ritu did badly in the exams but her father gave her a job as a management trainee so that her institute would think well of her.

"Just to show your institute" is a direct translation of a natural Hindi phrase.

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Note added at 3 hrs (2013-10-26 23:38:11 GMT)
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Given that this is from a Hindi film, it is possible that others don't know they are father and daughter. Such plot lines are quite common.

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Note added at 13 hrs (2013-10-27 09:38:17 GMT)
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"For appearance sake" is more accurate than what I have suggested above.
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