A Crowdsourced Attempt to Translate the Verizon/AOL Announcement to English
On Tuesday, two of the great tech CEOs of our time came together to announce a deal that both ignited and perplexed the business and technology worlds: Verizon is buying AOL for $4.4 billion.
In the wake of the announcement, the question that alighted on everyone’s mind was: “Why?” As in: Why would Verizon pay $4.4 billion for AOL? And: Why does AOL still exist?
Fortunately, it’s a question that the companies’ respective CEOs addressed in some detail in an official joint statement Tuesday morning. However, due to a regrettable clerical mistake, the statements by Verizon’s Lowell McAdam and AOL’s Tim Armstrong were published in an obscure dialect called Corporatese, spoken almost exclusively by C-level executives and VPs of corporate communications. To the average English speaker, it is functionally unintelligible.
To remedy this, we at Slate have taken on the Lutherian task of translating this profound document into a form that the masses can comprehend.
Since Google Translate and other popular translation engines do not yet support Corporatese, this had to be done entirely by hand, a task too imposing for your humble correspondent to undertake alone. Instead, we sought help by posting the document on Genius.com and inviting scholars from around the Internet to join us in the hard work of untangling McAdam and Armstrong’s prose.
The work is not yet finished—indeed, it may never be—but already some striking progress has been made. We welcome you to join us in this noble endeavor by logging into Genius to edit the document directly. Or, if you prefer, you can offer your insights in the comments below.
Previously in Slate:
Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University.