Lend me your ears, or Oi! Listen up

I recently read an interesting article about how scientists use words differently to most people. This isn't jargon where most people don't know the words but rather a case of 'it doesn't mean what you think it means'. One of the best examples of this is the word 'theory', which shows up in the arguments of ID proponents a lot. They're thinking of the common meaning, a hypothesis or a guess, whereas in science it has a much more strictly defined meaning. According to the United States National Academy of Sciences, 'In science, the word theory refers to a comprehensive explanation of an important feature of nature supported by facts gathered over time. Theories also allow scientists to make predictions about as yet unobserved phenomena.'

So, I've been thinking about how we alter our writing for our target audience. When I first started doing my master's, I thought this was a ridiculous concept. I was going to use the words that I thought were best and I'd be damned if I was going to pander to some ignoramus with a limited vocabulary and a fear of big words. I like to think I've learnt since then and that I realise this isn't the case. Now, I realise that tailoring to your audience isn't about judging what you think the readers will understand but about trying to understand how pieces in this field are written and, quite importantly, asking 'does this mean what I think it means?'

However, tailoring to an audience is not just about word choice; style is a big factor as well. (This could probably illustrate the above point as well. Here, I mean writing in a particular manner, not writing with flair.)  My work for WIPO provides a good example. A translation must not only be accurate but they have a particular in-house style that must be adhered to. For example, the avoidance of pronouns and an insistence on a full colon before a list punctuated with semi colons, even if all my grammar books say one doesn't belong there. So, tailoring a translation to this audience means writing in a particular way, not just using particular words (although there is an element of this as well).

Of course we must product an accurate translating of what the author has originally written, but no piece of writing exists in a vacuum so we also need to consider the audience and whether or not our translation will help the author communicate with that audience. Because if it doesn't, then no matter how accurate it is, no matter how beautiful a piece of writing, no matter how much effort we put into it, if it doesn't help the author communicate with their audience, we have failed.

Chinglish is starting to really bug me

I'm currently in China visiting S____'s family (from now on I will refer to my wife as S____ because I can't keep referring to her as 'my wife' and if Edgar Allen Poe did it, then it must be cool) and there's a lot more English around than one would expect, especially since this is a city that has very few western visitors. However, it is almost universally poorly translated or unnatural. A lot of it is because the target audience doesn't care but some of it is baffling.

Most of the examples I've seen probably fall into the first category. In some cases, translation is being used as a marketing tool. For example, I've seen signs in local supermarkets and in shopping centres that were in English and Chinese. Some were just simple things like 'fruit and vegetables' but some were telling you not to parabolic off the escalators. (S____ confirmed that this meant don't throw things off the escalator) There are also examples of gratuitous English here as well. We went to a photographer to get pictures taken of our daughter and a part of the service is they print an album for with the pictures. These albums tend to have cute or sentimental phrases in Chinese written in then and some in English as well. Many of these are fine, if a little over sweet for my taste, and might include lines from a poem or a song (I saw one with Jingle Bells) , but some can also be nonsensical. (I saw one sample album with Lolita written on the front. I can see how they might have made the mistake ("It's a book about a little girl") but I still don't want it associated with my little girl.) I think these are slightly unusual in that they have been translated into English for the benefit of people who don't read English. This is English as a prestige factor or a cool factor, much like a Westerner getting kanji tattoos with no idea of what they mean but applied to businesses.

The baffling ones are weird because it's either not clear who the target is or it's not clear why they didn't do a better job. In the first case, I saw a billboard when we were visiting S____'s sister that read "The worker works honorably greatly." This was in a city where I may have been the first foreigner the locals had ever seen. It's not just weird but I can't work out who it's for. As an example of the second case, when I was booking the flights here, I had narrowed the field down to Cathay Pacific and a slightly cheaper airline that I won't name. In the end, I choose Cathay Pacific because the other airline's website was so poorly translated that I just didn't feel comfortable with them. It made them look cheap and more than a little dodgy. Our fares alone would probably have covered most of the costs of a decent translation and how many fares are they missing out on for a similar reason?

I have one final example I'm not sure what to think of. As I was passing through the airport when we arrived, I saw a lot of signs to the effect of "Welcome to civilised Fuzhou", I don't remember the details exactly but I didn't notice anything wrong with the grammar etc. What's strange is that it never occured to me that Fuzhou might not be civilised until I saw the sign. It seemed very forced and unnatural and I don't think any native English speaker would write something like this in an Australian airport, for example. I don't think they were trying to counteract an already existing perconception, so is this a case of a completely normal Chinese phrase coming off as weird in English, is this marketing aimed at locals who don't know English ("Look, our airport is so big we have signs in English"), or is it just me?