Re: Not Writing for Translation (was RE: Re(2): Number/Figure)

[Peter <pnewman1 -at- optonline -dot- net>]

Jonathan West wrote:
> 
> > Translating a language is comparitively simple: translating a
> > cultural idiom is sometimes far from simple. What's clear and
> > obvious to me
> > in my culture is not necessarily either clear or obvious to you in yours,

 
> Absolutely! In international standards meetings that I have to attend, where
> the majority of people usually do not have English as their first language,
> I take great care to avoid idiom when I am speaking, for exactly this
> reason. 

Sometimes you do not even reach the idiom stage. A few years ago I was
asked to price out a job for a Japanese owned company. I replied that I
would have to think about it, meaning that I could not make a realistic
quote off the top of my head. My statement was interpreted as meaning
that I was not interested in quoting. It seems that to a Japanese
person, saying I will think about it, is a polite way of saying no.

-- 
Peter

"When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a 
minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute-and it's 
longer than any hour. That's relativity,"
- Einstein-

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