| Pages in topic: < [1 2] | How Americans can write in British English Thread poster: Reed James
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Fan Gao
Australia
Local time: 19:23
English to Chinese
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| Apologies for flippancy. | Jun 8, 2006 |
I just want to apologise for being flippant about the differences between American English and British English.
As Anne Koth picked up on, I honestly didn't even take into account the difference in punctuation which of course can make a critical difference to a sentence.
I will certainly take this into consideration more in the future.
Best wishes,
Mark
| | | | | Arbitrary or pragmatic? | Jun 8, 2006 |
Richard Creech wrote:
There is no "British language." English (with its multiple varieties) is one language long spoken in Britain, along with Scots, Welsh, Scots Gaelic and Cornish. I am not sure which variety of English is "pure" and when that purity was established. English, both in Britain and elsewhere, has been in a continual state of evolution from the time the Angles and Saxons settled the island.
OK, to be pragmatic, there is no single unitary British English, but a number of regional variants (like in most countries, not least the USA). And like in most countries, there are several indigenous languages (Welsh etc. in the UK, Indian languages in the US and Canada, Aborigine in Australia).
However, there are recognisable differences between the generally accepted versions of English in the UK and the US. And if a text is written in US English, UK readers will notice (and vice versa). Whether this is acceptable, depends on the type of text, its purpose and the target readers.
For example, when a self-confessed cowboy (hi Derek!) says:
I generally agree with Victor that one would have to go live there for a while in order to pick up the nuances
the Brits among us have no problem understanding what he is saying, but we also notice that the phrase "go live" (instead of "go and live") is "not quite British".
If Reed, Derek or Richard write for a UK audience, or if I write for a US audience, there will be a number of such details. Most of them are not tragic; very occasionally they could lead to misunderstanding.
So coming back to Reed's original question, you can certainly accept work that is addressed to a British readership, but there is no quick and easy way to do this in such a way that you can produce fully-fledged British English to the exclusion of your own vernacular. And the same applies to me working the other way, of course. And if the client insists on authentic English from one of the countries, the translation should be done (or at least proofread) by a native speaker of that brand of English.
| | | | nruddy 
Mexico
Local time: 03:23
German to English
| mediamatrix (X)
Local time: 05:23
Spanish to English
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| A question for Reed ... | Jun 8, 2006 |
Victor has the best approach here, suggesting 10 years immersion as a minimum requirement, 'practicing the accent and the spoken style, and persevering until nobody notices that you are not a native speaker'.
Your website http://www.squidoo.com/artedetraducir tells us that you're been living in Chile for over 10 years. So, tell us, Reed:
You've had over 10 years immersion ... See more Victor has the best approach here, suggesting 10 years immersion as a minimum requirement, 'practicing the accent and the spoken style, and persevering until nobody notices that you are not a native speaker'.
Your website http://www.squidoo.com/artedetraducir tells us that you're been living in Chile for over 10 years. So, tell us, Reed:
You've had over 10 years immersion in Chilean Spanish - how's it going?
And if you reply saying that my question is unfair because Spanish is not your native language, let me assure you that picking up a different version of your native language is no easier than picking up a regional variant of a foreign language.
MediaMatrix ▲ Collapse
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Nikki Graham
United Kingdom
Local time: 10:23
Spanish to English
| Is it really necessary? | Jun 8, 2006 |
writeaway wrote:
There are lots of translators who don't accept work into other versions of their native language.
I am one of them. I've often been told the target audience is American, so I have refused the job. There is no shortage of Spanish to US English translators. Why would I want to step on their toes?
| | | | Angela Dickson (X)
United Kingdom
Local time: 10:23
French to English
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There is no "British language." English (with its multiple varieties) is one language long spoken in Britain, along with Scots, Welsh, Scots Gaelic and Cornish. I am not sure which variety of English is "pure" and when that purity was established. English, both in Britain and elsewhere, has been in a continual state of evolution from the time the Angles and Saxons settled the island.
Leaving aside the question of 'purity' (a distraction, in my opinion), I certainly can recognise an Americanism when I see it, and if required by my client I can remove it. So something that I translate from French or US English will definitely be UK English, and recognisable as such to a UK English speaker - which is sometimes what the client wants. My written English (I hope) is that of an educated UK native speaker. My spoken English reflects my mixed geographical roots, but my clients don't know that from my writing (again, I hope).
I have occasionally been asked to translate into US English, and I always tell the client that I can certainly switch the US spellcheck on but I can't guarantee that my turns of phrase won't be specifically British. This is sometimes good enough, and if it isn't, there are plenty of American translators for them to choose from.
| | | | Reed James
Chile
Local time: 05:23
Member (2005)
Spanish to English
TOPIC STARTER | Quite well, actually | Jun 8, 2006 |
[Edited at 2006-06-08 16:45] Mediamatrix,
I do quite well in the local dialect and culture. How about you? How long have you been here?
I do think that it is easier for a person to acquire a dialect different from one's own than a language which is foreign altogether. Take actors, for example. Nicole Kidman speaks "American" fairly well. I suppose that if one listened hard enough that one would detect something "foreign" sounding.
There are a few Am... See more
[Edited at 2006-06-08 16:45] Mediamatrix,
I do quite well in the local dialect and culture. How about you? How long have you been here?
I do think that it is easier for a person to acquire a dialect different from one's own than a language which is foreign altogether. Take actors, for example. Nicole Kidman speaks "American" fairly well. I suppose that if one listened hard enough that one would detect something "foreign" sounding.
There are a few Americans who speak quite "British", at least to my American ear. The sports writer George Plimpton grew up in New York City, but was educated at a British school there. I once heard Paul Theroux, the great travel writer at a reading, and his speech sounded awfully British.
There is definitely a cultural tie at play here that has nothing to do with the number of years one has spent immersed in a particular language and culture. I am often more at home reading French novels in French than I am reading a magical realism novel by the likes of Gabriel García Márquez. There is a particular mindset involved with a given culture that goes beyond how long one has been acquainted with it.
For the record, I wasn't planning on becoming 100% British. What I want is English that reads "British-like" for web site translations and reports.
My two shillings.
Reed
[Edited at 2006-06-08 16:46] ▲ Collapse
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| Writing British English | Jun 8, 2006 |
Reed D. James wrote:
For the record, I wasn't planning on becoming 100% British. What I want is English that reads "British-like" for web site translations and reports.
mónica alfonso wrote:
I am Argentinian and sometimes agencies ask for European/Chilean/Mexiacan/Portorican/etc. Spanish. I think languages that are so widely spoken (English, Spanish) have several varieties, and it would be very risky to try to translate into one which is not your own.
No matter how 'neutral' you try to be, your long learned terms will slip off your tongue; also, something that may seem obviously common for you perhaps is not so in other place.
Moreover, is it worthwhile to investigate each word with colleagues form other countries to check appropriateness? (And this you would have to do continuously in order to be responsible and honest.)
IMHO, there is room and work for everyone, let's each of us take the task he/she does better.
Thanks for starting this very interesting thread here, Reed. I think Mónica summed up the problem very nicely. We also might want to ask ourselves these questions:
How did we become good at writing English prose? What was the process? How do most people become good writers? I think style is what distinguishes a good writer from a mediocre writer, and I think translators must also be good writers.
There are some types of text that don't require especially good style: when translating contracts, for example, accuracy is paramount; style is secondary because good style wasn't what the author was trying to achieve in the first place. Here it is important to use the vocabulary, terms of art commonly used in the target language for contracts. So a transition to British English would be easier. It would require studying this area of the British legal system. The proper punctuation and spelling can also be acquired without a great deal of effort.
But by and large, style is critical for good prose, and it takes many years of practice to acquire a good writing style. British and American writing styles are very different. I certainly can't produce good British writing, and if I tried I would end up with something that sounded forced and unnatural, which is something I certainly don't want to offer my clients.
Most good writers are good readers. They read voraciously and read the best stuff. They are also exposed to articulate speakers over a period of many years. So, I'd say the process of becoming a good writer is a long one and never ends. Most good writers concentrate on the vernacular they are raised and educated in during this long process. So, do you really want to go through that long process again to become a good writer of British prose? I certainly don't.
Best wishes, Kim
| | | | | The US-UK English debate. My two florins | Jun 8, 2006 |
This is a very interesting thread that has triggered some excellent and incisive comments.
My own experience is that too much is made of the differences between British and American English. I’m a Brit, born, raised, and educated in England, and now I live in the United States. I spend every working day writing or translating into “American English”.
Perhaps it’s because of the nature of the texts I work on, but the US-UK difference has never posed a problem. ... See more This is a very interesting thread that has triggered some excellent and incisive comments.
My own experience is that too much is made of the differences between British and American English. I’m a Brit, born, raised, and educated in England, and now I live in the United States. I spend every working day writing or translating into “American English”.
Perhaps it’s because of the nature of the texts I work on, but the US-UK difference has never posed a problem. There are the obvious orthographical distinctions (color/colour, program/programme, and so on); the relatively few variants in vocabulary (sidewalk/pavement, elevator/lift, attorney/barrister/solicitor, and so on); and the relatively few differences in punctuation (commas and full stops [periods!] inside quotation marks, and so forth).
The software takes care of the first matter. Being reasonably literate takes care of the second. And the Chicago Manual of Style usually helps with the third.
Writing is writing and good English is good English. It’s crisp, clean, accessible, uncluttered by neologisms and unburdened by jargon. I suspect that if you read a text in good English that omitted all of the obvious signifiers as outlined above, it would be impossible to determine if the thing were written by a Limey or a Yank (or, indeed, by a Canuck, an Ozzie, a Kiwi or a Bajan).
If you read a page of Peter Carey, do you immediately think: “he’s Australian”? When you’ve completed a paragraph of Philip Roth’s glorious prose (one that doesn’t include references to Bar Mitvahs in New Jersey), do you think: “he’s American”? If you changed every cultural reference in Ian McEwan’s “Atonement”, set it in the United States instead of England, and changed the spellings to US English, would the actual prose alert you to the nationality of the author?
In the several years that I, as a Brit, have been writing “American English”, I have had arguments about precisely three (count them: three) issues.
1. The client always wants to change my “between” to “among”, on the grounds that “between” denotes the interaction of two things, whereas “among” should be used if there are more than two things. The reason why I argue about this is that the client is wrong. If I stick my hand in a bowl of sugar and take it out, I do not say: “I have sugar among my fingers”.
2. The client is patently confused about the use of an apostrophe to signify possession. They always want to see “Mr. Jones’ book”. They never want to see “Mr. Jones’s book”. I argue with the client about this because the client is wrong.
3. The client (and many authorities who should know much better, including the “Washington Post”) has a wholly unjustified horror of splitting compound verbs. This is a virus in American English, so doubtless it will soon become the norm worldwide. Every day in the “Post” I read such inanities as “The secretary of state also has said …” If you wrote “The secretary of state not has said …” people would think you were sub-literate. Why, why (please, Yanks, tell me why) do they do this? Even the US style Bible (Chicago Manual of Style) tells you not to do it.
Finally: Barry, serial commas (“Oxford commas” in the UK, those used before “and” in lists) are not to be disregarded. I just finished a book for Oxford University Press and the serial comma has many and varied uses. It can obviate ambiguity to use a comma before “and”. The classic example is a book dedication: “This book is for my parents, Ayn Rand and God.”
Best wishes to all posters. A very good thread. ▲ Collapse
| | | | mediamatrix (X)
Local time: 05:23
Spanish to English
+ ...
| well, since you ask, Reed ... | Jun 9, 2006 |
Reed D. James wrote:
Mediamatrix,
I do quite well in the local dialect and culture. How about you? How long have you been here?
I've been in Chile just 3 years - it's early days yet! I'm still getting to grips with the differences compared to the Spanish I learnt 30 years ago in Guatemala. ¡Puchica! and all that...
My earlier comments were based on previous experiences. I lived and worked for 12 years in French-speaking Belgium and (with all due modesty) I was ranked as one of the best pseudo-francophones in the company by my colleagues of French mother-tongue. But I gained that ranking only after around 10 years. Then (as if to punish me for getting too good!) the company upped sticks and took us all to Geneva. My reputation took a battering - especially from my new Swiss colleagues - and it took another several years (but not a full ten) before I regained the respect of my francophone peers.
I do think that it is easier for a person to acquire a dialect different from one's own than a language which is foreign altogether.
There I strongly disagree. An important factor is that when learning and using a foreign language - at least in the early 'formative' years - you are always conscious of the need to pick the right words and right phraseology; in contrast, when picking up (because you can't 'learn') a variant of your own language you will find it very difficult to avoid relapsing into the state of semi-unconcious word selection and phrase construction that are part and parcel of using what we refer to as our 'mother tongue'. In my experience, you tend to pick up an accent far quicker than a dialect - but that's not much help when you're translating.
Incidentally, I've heard it said that you can claim proficiency in any language/culture/dialect when you can tell a dirty joke and get a laugh from at least 50% of those present.
On a slightly different note, several contributors to this thread have written about the need to use a 'good style' (whatever THAT means ...). There's comment here about the need to associate with articulate speakers, about mid Atlantic English, and suchlike. Er... I thought that, as translators, our output was supposed to reflect the style of the source text - at least in non-technical material. Have I missed something?
On yet another slightly different note, I was recruited to work in Belgium (and later Switzerland) as an en--> fr translator (and later en+fr editor) of engineering standards documents on the basis a) of my knowledge of broadcast engineering; b) of the fact that I was educated in Home Counties English. Once in the job, I discovered that the vast majority of the readers of those documents, available worldwide in English and French only, were in fact being read by engineers using English as a second or third language. Many of them had quite severe difficulties understanding Home Counties English, even though that was closest to what they had (perhaps) learnt at school. Yet worse, for them, was Oxbridge English - which I often found myself translating into ... English for TOFLers. This is where tact and diplomacy play their part in the translation business. If you doubt that, you go try explaining to a BBC Research Engineer, sporting a PhD from Cambridge in digital video coding, why you found it necessary to translate his research report into ... English!
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