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On Behalf Of Eddie Hollon confused me with this pairing of assertions:
> In any event, the assertion that a passage is "good
> enough," because it works for a native English speaker
> is both ethnocentric and short-sighted. As
> professional communicators in , our words have the
> potential to be translated into any language and
> distributed across the globe--whether that is your
> intent or not. Although you may not be writing for an
> international audience, making faulty assumptions or
> generalizations about the language you use opens the
> door to all kinds of problems. Therefore, writing with
> your audience's needs and limitations in mind is the
> only logical advice to give, which was my original
> point.
So, when you assume that your lovely prose will get kidnapped, spirited away
to foreign lands and badly translated by people who will never have access
to you (for clarification)... um... what's the point of any admonitions
about knowing one's audience? Seriously, if the assumption is that you have
no control over where your work goes once it leaves your keyboard, but you
must nevertheless prepare it to best serve "the audience" - who by this
scenario could be any person in the world who can read in any language, with
no specification as to their reading level - then your assessment of your
audience necessarily devolves to the lowest possible common denominator.
Is that it? No matter what the subject matter, no matter who you _think_
your audience is, you should always assume (and write for) an audience of
barely literate bush people?
Or have I missed something in the logic?
Kevin
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