could you help me to explain the following sentence, many thanks~
@doublelifefish (33)
China
April 28, 2011 3:20am CST
I need to know the mean of "call out" in the following sentence. Is that mean called loudly?
"Please do the test roll of the ghost flower cdc in your aa quality as there was call out from ****(company's name)about streaking."
1 response
@owlwings (43910)
• Cambridge, England
28 Apr 11
I think that, in this case, "call out" means that the company made a complaint about 'streaking' or bad quality in the product.
The sentence is difficult to understand, partly because it is not clear what is meant by 'the test roll of the ghost flower', 'cdc' and 'your aa quality'. This might be clearer, however, if we knew the context (what product is being described).
On the whole, the sentence sounds as if it has been literally translated (perhaps by a software translator) from a language very different to English. It is certainly not the way that it would be written in English but, because I don't understand what the subject is (and have no idea what 'the test roll of the ghost flower' might be!), I can't put it into better English for you.
1 person likes this
@owlwings (43910)
• Cambridge, England
28 Apr 11
Since you have placed this under 'clothing' and tagged it 'fabric', can I assume that it is dealing with a printing or dyeing process? If that is so, the company has presumably complained about or reported problems with streaking (running or, perhaps offsetting, of colours or uneven colour distribution) in the printing or dyeing process.
To "call out" can be used in a number of ways and the meaning would usually depend on the context in which it is used and, in spoken English, on the emphasis on the words "call" and "out". Here are some examples:
(1) "If your child is doing something they shouldn't, you should call out to them to stop." implies that the person is speaking loudly and from a distance. Notice that, here, 'to call out' is an intransitive verb - it has a subject but no object.
(2) "The boss called me out on the poor quality of my work" This is slang or jargon, though quite common. It means that the boss criticised or complained about the poor quality. It is used as a transitive verb - but notice that the object of the verb comes directly after 'call': 'to call someone out' is correct in this context. It is from this meaning that 'to make a call-out' comes, in the context of your sentence.
(3) "The union called out the workers [to strike] because of the unfairness of the conditions" Again, this is a transitive use of the verb but, in this case, the object - 'the workers' - comes after 'out'. Here, it doesn't imply criticism or complaint (at least, not of the workers!). Even though the union leader may not have physically shouted "Everybody out!" to the workers, that is what it literally means because that is the way that it would have been done in the past.
(4) As a noun, the word 'call-out' (usually hyphenated) is used to describe an explanatory note or extra information on a diagram or chart. It is usually enclosed in a box with a line connecting it to the thing being annotated.
1 person likes this
@doublelifefish (33)
• China
29 Apr 11
Thank you for your nice explaintion.
"ghost print" is a name of print on the fabric, and "cdc" is a kind of fabric made from silk.
so the sentence means the customer worried about the problem of streaking of the fabric because there was this problem on the fabric made by the same manufacturer. so they want us to do "streaking" test...
