Categories: professional-development, words
Date: 20 November 2007 21:40:22
Following on from yesterday's report about the disappointing Polish film, I thought I would continue on a vaguely Polish theme. One of the Other Things I did during my enforced period of unlucrative inactivity was to respond to a request to do a proofreading test for a Polish company. The task involved correcting an English text designed for learners of English as a foreign language. I found this to be quite difficult for the simple reason that it was a conversation. In places, the language used was entirely correct but somewhat stilted for a conversation. I wasn't sure if They wanted me to modify the language to be 100% grammatically correct (but not very natural) or so that it read conversationally but not always strictly grammatically. I ended up writing a wodge of footnotes to justify the position I took...It feels a little odd to think that this text is going to be assessed by a non-native speaker. I don't know anything about Polish grammar but I do know that a lot of linguists (myself included sometimes...oh, all right, quite often, really) can be very pedantic about what is right and what is wrong. One of the glorious things about English is that it is so very flexible and one can often argue that black is white in terms of usage. (This flexibility can also drive me mad when clients want me to come down on a particular side of the grammatical fence (oooh, how spooky...just as I wrote that my English dictionary started to slide off the desk!!) as I am reluctant to provide a rod for them to beat me with on subsequent occasions...).
I was also required to submit a piece of “creative writing”. I sent the company a review I wrote of an audio book which was published in the local rag earlier this year. But I wonder if they will understand it. It is jammed full of very British political and cultural references and if you haven't lived here for the past 10 years, it is quite possible that much of it will be completely incomprehensible.