Thursday, May 6, 2010

Word!

Great article about the world of translations:
http://provenwrite.wordpress.com/2010/05/06/mind-the-gap/

2 comments:

J.Doe said...

That was a very interesting article.
I was not ever a translator but while living in italy I was an English teacher. I am a native American speaker and have been told that my English is 'quite good' and if I study it I probaby could become fluent in it , 'almost like a native speaker'. One of my students even brought my lessons to his daughter's English teacher who is from Britain and she told them that I don't know English at all (I was teaching the simple past tense of verbs - not common in Britain but still English). To me this all showed that there is a heavy preference for British English and all others are trash. Have you encountered this extreme preference as a translator?

Romerican said...

Oh yes, I've dealt with this prejudice before: clients who consider American English a bastardized form of British English. I can understand when they're marketing to a British audience only... but most of the times they just assume British English is more proper. What's even more annoying is when they "correct" my American English by sticking in some British English terms and words, which creates a ridiculous, inconsistent hodgepodge of languages!