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Wade Courtney reports: <<Some of the engineers are Russian and they have
problems with their English.>>
After sending my previous note to the list, it occurred to me that I'd
forgotten to add a note of encouragement. In my experience, most editors
gradually acquire a fair bit of understanding of pidgin dialects such as
Russlish (Russian-written English) or Japlish (Japanese-written English*).
* As opposed to Englanese, which is the opposite and no doubt equally
puzzling to the Japanese editor. <g>
After enough exposure, you start to figure out how the underlying grammar of
the foreign language is leaving its footprint in the English, and begin
compensating for that by translating unconsciously. As a result, phrases
that formerly resulted in minutes of head-scratching bewilderment suddenly
start making enough sense that you can rewrite them fairly painlessly. It
takes time, but the work does get easier even when the authors don't get any
better at attempting English.
--Geoff Hart, geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
(try ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca if you get no response)
Forest Engineering Research Institute of Canada
580 boul. St-Jean
Pointe-Claire, Que., H9R 3J9 Canada
"Wisdom is one of the few things that look bigger the further away it
is."--Terry Pratchett
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