Welcome back friends, did you take a moment to do the quiz last week? We’ll have a fresh set for you next time, but for now let’s have a look at Round One.
To make life easier, here are the original questions:
1) Funding will eventually reach a whole-country scale throughout the EU.
2) The plans of the City Hall include modernisation of the ring road.
3) Popovic was proud to announce that an all-country team of experts would be examining the case.
4) We would like to inform that the 13.00 bus to Olsztyn has been cancelled.
5) Since joining the EU, more and more beers of the brewery are selling overseas.
6) They are, without a doubt, one of the best in Europe dance teams, and all totally hot!
7) The tears of the angel dripped onto her feet as she sat alone on the swing.
8) Parking of 6-axle vehicles in the nearest area of the Old Town is prohibited.
Now let’s look at each one together. Remember that these are all based on common examples of mistakes in EN translations, and translators of all kinds can make them. So:
(1,3) Any time we have this idea of mass coverage, there are a number of ways we can put it. To begin with, we can stay close to the broken whole-country by saying country-wide, nation-wide, city-wide, Europe-wide, X-wide etc. This should be easy to remember. Note that beyond a continental scale, we wouldn’t say necessarily say planet-wide unless is was for a specific effect, but would instead go to global and its friends.
We can also use some handy one-word synonyms – national, international etc. (‘A team of international experts has been assembled to tackle the problem’, ‘Funding will reach a national level throughout the EU.’).
(2,5) What we're talking about here are the weird noun-preposition-noun phrases, the ‘thing of a thing’ stuff. This is actually quite a big can of robaky which we’re going to open in detail at some later date (or sooner if at least one of you writes and asks for it :). In the meantime, instead of saying Duration of trip, consider saying Trip duration instead. Instead of putting According to directives of the EU..., consider According to EU Directives... .
The second album of the band was well received is to be avoided in favour of The band’s second album was well received, and so on and so on itd itp.
(4) As discussed earlier, inform always needs a subject, we can never just inform about or inform that. If you can’t or don’t want to extrapolate a subject, use announce instead. So, ‘We would like to inform you / announce that the 13.00 bus to Olsztyn has been cancelled’ is our friend here.
(6) Something similar to (1,3), we sometimes make our lives more complicated, and our sentences longer than need be, by not using a simple adjective. Here, best in Europe dance teams should be simply written as best European dance teams. The rule of thumb for good, flowing English is that less is more. If you can get in the habit of thinking of your English sentences as short bursts from a machine gun, rather than the sustained artillery fire of their Polish counterparts, you’ll be several giant steps closer to being an ‘invisible translator’. (Although see below for a caveat).
(7) A tricky one this (by the way, is anyone else sick of seeing ‘tricksy’ everywhere post-Peter Jackson LoTR film trilogy? Certainly in the English press it’s been picked up as a hot word by journos of all kinds, from highbrow arts press to tabloid ‘red tops’. Yuk, I wish they’d stop). Err, yes, sorry.
Anyway, on the surface this looks like it belongs with (6), but in fact it’s okay as it is since it’s hard to imagine a context for this other than art or literature, where it would be okay to use a slightly more long-winded phrasing.
Although this may seem to fly in the face of the advice above about being short ‘n sweet, there is a definite distinction between the faulty phrasing found in (1,3,6) (which can appear in any text) and what we have here (which is okay in a poetic, literary, artistic text). Again, something we’ll come back to, but in the meantime try to think of it as being ‘Okay because the context said so’, if that makes sense.
(8) As the Notorious Drab said in the comments here, vicinity is the Highlander* of synonyms for saying in the area of or it’s faulty, frightening friend in the nearest area of (bleeee). Remember this word; let it in to your lives and it will serve you well.
Okay, next week, new questions and from now on I’ll be asking you to post an answer or two in the comments, or maybe to offer a key explanation of something. After a few weeks of that, whoever has the most right will win a prize. And if nobody does it, I’ll win a prize instead, yay! :D
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