Re: Engrish

ScratchMonkey <ScratchMonkey.blacklist@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

bastXXXette@xxxxxxxxx wrote in news:49973a3a$0$1636

I think I've mentioned that at work I've had to edit manuals
that were translated from Japanese to English by Japanese
speakers (whose English was passable, but not at all
natural-sounding). My job was to reword it so that it sounded
like something an actual English speaker would say. Definitely
one of the funnier assignments I've gotten at work.

I think I'd love a job like that. I'm a compulsive editor and
cringe at the stuff I see published.

But it's not just the Japanese. Nor just "foreigners". American
speakers, raised in the language, are often incapable of clear
writing.

Well, sure. But this was a manual, written by someone who was hired
presumably because he/she had good writing skills. In Japanese,
anyway. It was just a bad translation.

I have absolutely seen extremely bad writing from native English
speakers, but in general those people aren't hired to be technical
writers! Occasionally I take something that has been written by an
engineer or IT guy, and I have to massage it until it's usable as
documentation.

Considering the intellectual distance foreign writers come to
write those broken manuals, I have to consider them much more
capable than many natives.

Agreed. In fact, the manual I was talking about, with the bad
translation, was not grammatically incorrect. It simply lacked any
*feel* for the English language as it would be spoken by a native
speaker. It's possible they used translation software, and then fixed
the egregious grammatical errors. But they were unable to achieve a
natural sounding language, as spoken in any English-speaking country.
(Since this product was to be marketed in the US, it would ideally
sound like American English. I would've happily accepted UK or
Australian, though. This was none of the above!)

--
Joyce ^..^

(To email me, remove the X's from my user name.)
.

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