обосновать v. обосновывать

07:26 Oct 20, 2017 

Thank you to everyone for your input; I'm glad that I wasn't the only one to find it a bit puzzling.

20:39 Oct 13, 2017 

There is nothing particularly special or tricky about Russian if you ask me. The sum total of meanings, if you want to put it this way, is the same across all the major languages, give or take. It's just that the bag of tools each particular one offers is different, and not necessarily matching each other one for one. Yet make no mistake, you can hammer a nail in with an ax, or even a piece of hard rock just as easily as with a hammer.

Nor is this Russian sentence particularly ambiguous. I say the meaning is fairly clear and English comes quite close to it with its very own "If you have to explain a joke, there is no joke".

Now, what Mikhail meant by his "use the same root for both words, but make one a verb and the other a noun" kind of leaves me baffled too. Maybe he'll grace us with an explanation when he wakes up:)

20:05 Oct 13, 2017 

The sentence here is ambiguous. I had to read it several times to see the meaning. Beautiful things (design) need no explanation, they speak for themselves. You need to explain taste or beauty to those who have no taste or can't see the beauty. But explanations are lost on them because such people don't believe they have no taste. The original sentence needs rewriting. Обосновывать means that you have to do it all the time.
Russian is tricky, too much of everything. The famous Dostoyevsky's ляп - "круглый стол овальной формы" makes me wonder how it was translated into English))

19:20 Oct 13, 2017 

I don't see how making one a verb and one a noun (see Mikhail's comment below) conveys any sort of imperfective as opposed to perfective meaning. To me, it's just varying the word for the sake of not using the same word twice. Which is fine, but I don't see what it has to do with the Russian grammar. Do Russian native speakers really "hear" a difference in meaning in this Russian text? Full disclosure: I am somewhat tone-deaf with respect to aspect.

18:28 Oct 13, 2017 

Only those who have no taste need to explain, but they are none the wiser.

Methink, here's a great example of how what is a purely grammatical difference in one language cannot be rendered grammatically in another and requires that totally different means - lexical, in this case - be used. If anyone needed another reason why MT cannot possibly be expected to ever replace a human translator in creative areas, here's one.

I am not offering this as an answer because the Russian lady below suggested this idea first, except of course she stopped short of a credible soundbite that would be acceptable to a native English speaker. That's all right I think. You can dot your own i's.

15:21 Oct 13, 2017 

There is no tangible difference in this particular case, so you can safely translate it as you like.

P.S. But, of course, in many cases even seemingly small differences can completely change the meaning.

15:09 Oct 13, 2017 

My point is whether people feel there is a difference in sense between the two aspects in this case; after all, сдавать экзамен and сдать экзамен mean different things.