A Most Unusual Construction–Kill all the robots!
In the Times, July 27, writing about two new cars:
In the case of leases, the leasing company is eligible to claim the credit. Nissan plans to lease the base model of the Leaf for $349 a month for three years with $1,999 because of delivery. The Volt’s $350-a-month lease is also for three years, with $2,500 due at delivery.
Is this a case of mistranslation? “$1999 because of deliver”, where obviously, as the next phrase shows, it should be “due at delivery.” A reasonable computer mistake: ‘due at’ becomes ‘because of’ (think of ‘due to’ and ‘because of’).
Wait–here’s what (I think) happened! Some Japanese publicist wrote a press release in Japanese, and then used some translation software (google translate?) to convert it to English. The press release was passed on to a writer at the Times, who used cut-and-paste to fill out the story. Really sloppy journalism, folks.