| Pages in topic: < [1 2] | Translation into Global English Thread poster: staviano
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| clarification | Feb 21, 2009 |
Quote "I recently had an interesting discussion with a British lecturer I have teach some English classes in my program. During this discussion I mentioned a student, who could not see the "forest for the trees," to which my British colleague replied, "It's 'woods for the trees.'"
The expression in BE = to be unable to see the WOOD for the trees - no contest
Quote "By the way, between "wrench" and "spanner," the former wins: 13,200,000 to 3,330,000."
... See more Quote "I recently had an interesting discussion with a British lecturer I have teach some English classes in my program. During this discussion I mentioned a student, who could not see the "forest for the trees," to which my British colleague replied, "It's 'woods for the trees.'"
The expression in BE = to be unable to see the WOOD for the trees - no contest
Quote "By the way, between "wrench" and "spanner," the former wins: 13,200,000 to 3,330,000."
Of course WRENCH will get more ghits because we use the word for another tool in BE
[Edited at 2009-02-21 08:42 GMT]
[Edited at 2009-02-21 08:42 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | staviano 
Italy
Local time: 12:33
English to Italian
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER | it's not standardized | Feb 21, 2009 |
I agree with you Kevin that International English is not a standardized language, of course. in the case of the translation agency is a marketing strategy, as Leonardo puts it.
the fact that these translation agencies offer translation into Global English is part of the "talk" about Global English. what it is exactly is another question all together. It's not just academics talking about it, there is a lot of talk in the commercial world as well. but that's precisely what I am interested i... See more I agree with you Kevin that International English is not a standardized language, of course. in the case of the translation agency is a marketing strategy, as Leonardo puts it.
the fact that these translation agencies offer translation into Global English is part of the "talk" about Global English. what it is exactly is another question all together. It's not just academics talking about it, there is a lot of talk in the commercial world as well. but that's precisely what I am interested in: the contrast between all this talking about International English/Global English and translation practice.
Kevin, you say
Of course when writing for international audiences, one is supposed to avoid idiom generally and try to avoid complex sentence constructions, sophisticated humor, etc.
but then you add
When I'm not bound by ethical obligations of product safety and the like, I do, of course, cheerfully violate every rule of "global English" - quite deliberately.
I guess the point is that the principle of translating into a Global English is rather difficult to put into practice .
I look forward to hearing about other colleagues' experiences, if any, and the strategy they have adopted. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Are you sure? | Feb 21, 2009 |
polyglot45 wrote:
Quote "I recently had an interesting discussion with a British lecturer I have teach some English classes in my program. During this discussion I mentioned a student, who could not see the "forest for the trees," to which my British colleague replied, "It's 'woods for the trees.'"
The expression in BE = to be unable to see the WOOD for the trees - no contest
Quote "By the way, between "wrench" and "spanner," the former wins: 13,200,000 to 3,330,000."
Of course WRENCH will get more ghits because we use the word for another tool in BE
I did warn that what I wrote was hyperbole.
Have a great weekend (or whatever it may be called where you live)!
[Edited at 2009-02-21 13:13 GMT]
| | | | | Approaching global English | Feb 21, 2009 |
staviano wrote:
I agree with you Kevin that International English is not a standardized language, of course. in the case of the translation agency is a marketing strategy, as Leonardo puts it.
It's a marketing strategy that is usually harmless, but occasionally very misleading and dangerous. I fully support the idea of clear, simple writing for important instructions or documents intended for an international audience, or even most native English readers. Even highly educated English natives have vocabularies that are more limited than many of us assume, and nobody is harmed by keeping it simple if possible. But there are very clear limits that we are often unaware of, where a word in one English has a very different meaning in another English, and the parties in communication are often unaware of these differences. When I was a kid I had a fetish about British spelling and words and used these as often as I could to the great annoyance of many schoolteachers. But my real encounters with real British Englishes (there are many) showed me that the gap was far wider than I ever imagined, and so I have become very, very conservative about using American English and try to guard against creeping Briticisms.
My personal approach to the problem of international or global English is to choose a dominant variant. I choose American English inevitably, pointing out to the outsourcer that you can put a suit on a gorilla but he remains an ape, and I write as simply and clearly as I can. When I come across a term which I feel might be misunderstood (such as the AE wrench / BE spanner issue or hood/bonnet), I will place the alternative term in parentheses after the term in the main variant, e.g. "wrench (BE: spanner)". Wherever possible, of course, I try to avoid such situations. However, with the exception of a few obsessive scholars, I doubt whether any of us come close to a complete understanding of all the possible traps, so test reading by persons of other linguistic and cultural backgrounds is always desirable. By the time you are done with all these, you really would have been better off to localize in the first place. The last time a friend asked me to translate a software manual headed for India and Pakistan, I told her she was nuts if she didn't hire a competent German to English translator from that region. How can I be expected to know the most effective way to communicate to office workers in Calcutta?
Marketing is about communication, and comfort is a big part of that communication. Without considering local filters for understanding, marketing efforts will always be unduly limited in their effectiveness. This is not an earth-shaking revelation; any sober, serious translator or company knows this. We often have to make compromises, but we shouldn't fool ourselves and say these risks of miscommunication can be avoided entirely. In this sense, I think that the cheerful approach of marketing "standardized global English" is misleading and professionally dishonest. If the company has a rigorous style guide outlining their standard approach to this difficult problem, then I feel a little more comfortable with it, but only a little.
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| | | DGF wrench/spanner | Feb 21, 2009 |
Also found on Wikipedia - why seek further since it seems to be your reference?
In American English, wrench is the standard term, while spanner refers to a specialized wrench with a series of pins or tabs around the circumference. (These pins or tabs fit into the holes or notches cut into the object to be turned.) The most common shapes are called open-end wrench and box-end wrench.
In British English, spanner is the standard term. The most common shapes are called open... See more Also found on Wikipedia - why seek further since it seems to be your reference?
In American English, wrench is the standard term, while spanner refers to a specialized wrench with a series of pins or tabs around the circumference. (These pins or tabs fit into the holes or notches cut into the object to be turned.) The most common shapes are called open-end wrench and box-end wrench.
In British English, spanner is the standard term. The most common shapes are called open-ended spanner and ring spanner.
[Edited at 2009-02-21 13:55 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | | That seems to be referring to American usage of "spanner." | Feb 21, 2009 |
polyglot45 wrote:
Also found on Wikipedia - why seek further since it seems to be your reference?
In American English, wrench is the standard term, while spanner refers to a specialized wrench with a series of pins or tabs around the circumference. (These pins or tabs fit into the holes or notches cut into the object to be turned.) The most common shapes are called open-end wrench and box-end wrench.
In British English, spanner is the standard term. The most common shapes are called open-ended spanner and ring spanner.
[Edited at 2009-02-21 13:55 GMT]
I'll take that jab, though I did present more "official" (and British) references, in stride.
If I read that correctly, that refers to the use of "spanner" in American English, not--as you argued above--the use of "wrench" in British English for some different tool, which you claimed augmented the number of ghits for "wrench." But please do correct me, if I misunderstood your original post (which I included below for the sake of simplicity).
polyglot45 wrote:
Quote "By the way, between "wrench" and "spanner," the former wins: 13,200,000 to 3,330,000."
Of course WRENCH will get more ghits because we use the word for another tool in BE
What the section you highlighted does seem to show is that the number of ghits for "spanner" is probably higher because we use the word for another tool in AE (to borrow your phrasing).
[Edited at 2009-02-21 17:15 GMT]
| | | | | There is no 'Academie Anglaise' and no one would take any notice if there was | Feb 21, 2009 |
Nicole Schnell wrote: Christine Andersen wrote:
'I go get me a piece of wood in the back yard,' as opposed to 'I fetch a piece of wood from the garden'.
Why exactly does "I got me a piece..." strike you as American English? Because it sounds like being uttered by someone who will never make it past third grade? Or because it sounds like a line from a movie involving slaves?
Err - because I was writing late at night and have never been in America. So my American English is learnt from TV and films. In fact I'm back on line because the selection available right now (at present) is way (far) below average!
I was thinking of the AE construction 'go + verb' where BE uses 'go and + verb' or simply the verb without 'go' (which Americans also use of course).
Possibly because the 'speaker' thinks he is not good with words, and expresses himself better through his art. He speaks slowly, and doesn't write much, but in fact weighs every word carefully, so the translation will be a challenge. It may be hard work to put across all the undertones as well as what is said directly. He uses off-beat, regional words in Danish, and I would never seriously try to translate this into dialect in English, but I need to find some kind of equivalent.
I will have to weigh synonyms and check them in both AE and BE dictionaries or in context on the Net...
*** *** *** *** ***
There is no ultimate authority on English. There has never been a single form - right from the earliest texts recognisable as English, there have been dialects. Printing standardised it a little, but the problems of English spelling reflect variants in the way words were pronounced and approaches to etymology, and the fact that there was no real standard.
Modern mass media are not really ironing out the differences. Tom McArthur's 'The English Languages' and David Crystal's 'English as a Global Language' look into the question from different angles, but it is not becoming a single universal language, and it is really impossible to produce a variety that is globally understood.
Having said that, however, in certain fields I can still write something I call BE or UK English and expect very large groups of English speakers to understand it.
Native speakers have a huge common heritage, and we understand each other's language to a large extent because we are used to the many strands that make up that heritage. But we do also misunderstand each other where usages vary.
Whether non-natives also understand depends largely on how long they have learnt English, through what media, and how good their teachers were.
There was a form of 'Basic English' with a limited vocabulary, and the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary lists 3000 core words (The Oxford 3000 TM), which are those most frequently used, based on the British National Corpus and Oxford Corpus.
That dictionary also mentions VOICE, the Vienna Oxford International Corpus of English project, and very briefly discusses ELF, English as A Lingua Franca, which is developing structures and syntax that differ from the varieties of English spoken by native speakers. The conclusion, like Tom McArthur's, that English is not a single language, but has really become a family of languages.
So 'Global English' is really an illusion, but it is possible to write for very wide target groups in one variety of English or another.
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Nicole Schnell
United States
Local time: 03:33
English to German
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In memoriam | Two anecdotes | Feb 22, 2009 |
We always ask if British English or American English is required.
My two favorite replies:
- "We would like this letter to be translated into British English." (The recipient of the letter was located in the US, about 80 miles from our office, to be precise)
- "American English, please. But we have a 'No Z-policy'". (Maybe that's what some people consider Global English: You replace a 'z' with an 's' - whoosh! - there you have Global English.)
... See more We always ask if British English or American English is required.
My two favorite replies:
- "We would like this letter to be translated into British English." (The recipient of the letter was located in the US, about 80 miles from our office, to be precise)
- "American English, please. But we have a 'No Z-policy'". (Maybe that's what some people consider Global English: You replace a 'z' with an 's' - whoosh! - there you have Global English.)
"Global English" would make a good name for a cocktail or some bizarre breakfast served on an airplane, but that's it.
Edited for typo
[Edited at 2009-02-22 06:50 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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Nicole Schnell wrote:
...
- "American English, please. But we have a 'No Z-policy'". (Maybe that's what some people consider Global English: You replace a 'z' with an 's' - whoosh! - there you have Global English.)
"Global English" would make a good name for a cocktail or some bizarre breakfast served on an airplane, but that's it.
Just to be 'different', as a teenager in the 1960s, I went over to 'ise' instead of 'ize', which was commonly used by most people around me - in the UK!
The Oxford dictionaries still give the Z version first in many cases, and as a Greek scholar, my father perfers it. For several years the agency where I worked in house and Microsoft's spell checkers reinforced my use of 'ise' as a default (for BE), but I do carefully change it if clients ask for the 'z' variants.
If you really want to know, you have to listen for whether the speaker calls the letter a zed or a zee.
Writing in the 1940s and 50s (but I was not to discover him until several decades later...), Sir Ernest Gowers was advocating the 's' spellings in his 'Plain Words', addressed to British Civil servants.
Wikipedia has an article about just that point here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_spelling
Which shows it is far from clear-cut!
| | | | John Fossey
Canada
Local time: 06:33
Member (2008)
French to English
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| Global English? Canadian English? | Aug 1, 2009 |
Does Global English actually mean Canadian English? We're never quite sure whether we use British English or American English. We always remember the "U" in "colour", and we never, ever put a "Y" in "tire".
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| Internationally Accepted English | Sep 20, 2009 |
According to the late Richard Allsopp, the most famous Caribbean lexicographer, the proper term should be Internationally Accepted English (IAE). In his "Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage" (Oxford U.P. 1996) he argues that British Standard English(SE), American SE, Australian SE, Canadian SE, etc. all share a "substatial part of the core that is accepted as World English" (p. LVI). He proposes to call that core IAE.
He says that whereas "to have had it" and "to be quids in" are good B... See more According to the late Richard Allsopp, the most famous Caribbean lexicographer, the proper term should be Internationally Accepted English (IAE). In his "Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage" (Oxford U.P. 1996) he argues that British Standard English(SE), American SE, Australian SE, Canadian SE, etc. all share a "substatial part of the core that is accepted as World English" (p. LVI). He proposes to call that core IAE.
He says that whereas "to have had it" and "to be quids in" are good British SE, they are "beyond the embrace of IAE"(p. LVII).
I think this core is what translation agencies refer to when they propose "Global English". ▲ Collapse
| | | | staviano
Italy
Local time: 12:33
English to Italian
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TOPIC STARTER | Internationally Accepted English | Sep 23, 2009 |
Jairo,
Thank you for your comment.
I personally doubt that translation agencies refer to terms used by lexicographers, such as Richard Allsopp (thank you for mentioning it, I didn't know his work). His definition is problematic though. I wonder on what grounds he argues that there is such a thing as an Internationally Accepted English. What I am interested in, as I said before, it's finding out if Global English as a target language exists, in other words if translators are actually... See more Jairo,
Thank you for your comment.
I personally doubt that translation agencies refer to terms used by lexicographers, such as Richard Allsopp (thank you for mentioning it, I didn't know his work). His definition is problematic though. I wonder on what grounds he argues that there is such a thing as an Internationally Accepted English. What I am interested in, as I said before, it's finding out if Global English as a target language exists, in other words if translators are actually asked to translate into Global English. So far I have my research indicates that it's a construction, more than a reality. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 11:33
Member (2008)
Italian to English
[/quote]
Just to be 'different', as a teenager in the 1960s, I went over to 'ise' instead of 'ize', which was commonly used by most people around me - in the UK!
The Oxford dictionaries still give the Z version first in many cases, and as a Greek scholar, my father perfers it.
[/quote]
The spellchecker in MS Word thinks "realize" and "authorize" etc. are British English.
They were, at one time, but in British English it's now more us... See more [/quote]
Just to be 'different', as a teenager in the 1960s, I went over to 'ise' instead of 'ize', which was commonly used by most people around me - in the UK!
The Oxford dictionaries still give the Z version first in many cases, and as a Greek scholar, my father perfers it.
[/quote]
The spellchecker in MS Word thinks "realize" and "authorize" etc. are British English.
They were, at one time, but in British English it's now more usual to say "realise" and "authorise".
So I spend a good deal of my time going through translations and correcting all the "z"s into "s"s.
I translate into British English (although secretly - whisper it - it's actually Irish English).
To its credit, the spellchecker in Apple iWork does do British English correctly. ▲ Collapse
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