erinja:

Mustelvulpo:Your first task is to translate it into English. Someone who doesn't know baseball has no hope of understanding that, even if they speak English natively.

You speak English, but understanding the exact meaning of "Seamer Umar Gul (3-78) blew the top order away with an impressive new ball burst and Saeed Ajmal (3-45) left the tail-enders spinning as Sri Lanka were dismissed for 239 after winning the toss." would probably require a translation for you. (I pulled that verbatim from a news article about a cricket match)

Arcane terminology usually isn't worth translating with more arcane terminology.

Good point. I understand cricket reasonably well but I still can't grasp all those terms. It's as if every language has several other languages contained within it, understood by people involved in a certain pastime or profession. Those languages are largely incomprehensible to other native speakers who are not familiar with those professions or pastimes.

erinja:You speak English, but understanding the exact meaning of "Seamer Umar Gul (3-78) blew the top order away with an impressive new ball burst and Saeed Ajmal (3-45) left the tail-enders spinning as Sri Lanka were dismissed for 239 after winning the toss." would probably require a translation for you. (I pulled that verbatim from a news article about a cricket match)

Hang on, lets see if I can... hmmm.... but...

Oh stuff it. I come from a country where cricket's native and I don't know what they're talking about.

Actually, I think that's the thing - I don't think they're saying anything in particular. It's just fancy jargon. I googled the text and got this link which seems to show the whole story, basically it's just saying that this Pakistani Gul guy thrashed the first batters from Sri Lanka's team with some sort of new bowling skill, while his mate Ajmal was on mop-up duty, which puts my mind at rest but it does drive home the point

I think sports talk in English is really just like RAF banter.

auxro:By the way, just noticed that lernu.net dictionary translates word "finalo" also as "playoffs".

Some people do refer to the 'play-offs' as the 'finals', so perhaps you could use the plural form of 'finalo' in this context.

Maybe we could leave 'play-off' as one of the translations of 'finalo' for the Lernu dictionary. However, it seems best to list 'finale' and 'final' as the first translations. This is based on the following:

1. According to Wells:

finalo = finale; final (sports)

2. ReVo:

finalo = Fina parto de muzikaĵo

- no mention of the sport context.

4. NPIV2002: (see attachment)

I've just changed the Lernu dictionary to:

finalo = finale (music); final (sports), play-off, decider

I left 'play-off' and 'decider' there, but I think the vortaro entry would perhaps be better without these two words. They don't seem quite right!