LL-L: "Language varieties" LOWLANDS-L, 29.JAN.2001 (04) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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  L O W L A N D S - L * 29.JAN.2001 (04) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
  Posting Address: <lowlands-l at listserv.linguistlist.org>
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  A=Afrikaans, Ap=Appalachean, D=Dutch, E=English, F=Frisian, L=Limburgish
  LS=Low Saxon (Low German), S=Scots, Sh=Shetlandic, Z=Zeelandic (Zeeuws)
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From: john feather [johnfeather at sceptic1.freeserve.co.uk]
Subject: Language varieties

The December issue of "Contact Bulletin" has an article entitled "Traps for

minority media" which contains the following sentence: "Some suggest the
majority language in the minority media should be used, but the people
responsible in most [Austrian] minority media reject the idea as it would
lead the readers to read the German contributions only."

I suggested to the editor that "proper" English was becoming a minority
language and got the following reply:

"You are perfectly correct about the germanicisms in the text. It was
indeed
translated into English, not by a translator but by one of our German
editors. We normally apply the rule you are referring to for translation
[into mother-tongue only]
but given our limited resources if we get a text already translated into
English we hire proofreaders rather than get the text translated again. ...

[P]roofreading an improperly written text is often not very successful.
These
mistakes should have been picked up by our proof-readers and I can assure
you that we will pass on this information to them to improve the quality of

the text in future issues.

"Regarding your suggestion about EBLULglish, I would rather use the term
Euroenglish, a real phenomenon of language impoverishment, which I do not
personally support but which is a reality in a continent dominated by one
language only, used as the sole international mean of communication. This
is regrettable and we are devoting our energy and resources to go against
this trend and give breathing space to other languages as well. In the
absence of sufficient resources to have a truly multilingual newsletter
entirely translated by professionals, we do our best to produce an
acceptable standard of French and English. We work with authors from all
over Europe who often insist in writing articles directly in English. We
will therefore continue to face translation and proof-reading problems. It
is not our policy either to require that native speakers of French or
English work in our organisation and on our publications, since this would
be discriminatory and work against our goals. For this reason we do not
have the same control over the linguistic quality of our publication as
domestic English or French publications have. Finally, I would stress that
most of Contact Bulletin readers are neither English nor French native
speakers and ..  they are more concerned by efforts to develop their
endangered languages than the level of English or French in Contact
Bulletin. They would not accept that a large part of our resources
be devoted to producing high standard French and English before even
producing versions of CB in other languages."

I am a little surprised that a competent proof-reader would not notice
something odd about the sentence I quoted. Even an English speaker who had
lived abroad for a few years and was beginning to lose his native command
(apparently it happens after about 5 years) would surely notice an error at

the level of a music-hall joke.

John Feather johnfeather at sceptic1.freeserve.co.uk

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