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*                                                            * 
*                         CYBERSPACE                         * 
*         A biweekly column on net culture appearing         * 
*                in the Toronto Sunday Sun                   * 
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* Copyright 1999 Karl Mamer                                  * 
* Free for online distribution                               * 
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English rulez!

The argument has been made that English is the predominate 
language on earth because it's a mongrel tongue. You don't have 
to fake a knowledge of wines or know when to bow. If you can't 
find the right word, borrow a term from French or Sanskrit or 
just make one up. It's perfectly grenfedal. Your word might not 
make it into the Oxford English Dictionary but when did Oxford 
ever do anything for you other than make you feel stupid?

English gobbles up foreign terms with ease, though maybe silly 
accents, umlauts and strange letters you find in the names of 
Danish philosophers get spat out along the way. Other languages 
don't have such an easy time adopting English words. In some 
places, like France, the truncheon men of the Academie 
Francaise will jail you and strip your family of citizenship if 
you try to introduce a term like "McSuperTasty!" into the 
sacred lexicon.

The threat of a wicked punishment conceived by an under-
employed bureaucrat has, however, not stopped a French/English 
mell known as Franglais from springing up in parts of Europe 
and Ottawa-Hull. While Franglais might not be the preferred 
language of commerce, in shops and pubs and road-side traffic 
disputes it's the language of necessity. L'International 
Franglais Site de Web at www.camcol.demon.co.uk offers some 
handy and humorous lessons. Franglais can be learned in mere 
minutes as long as you follow one simple rule outlined at the 
page: "Vous simplement parle what you knower in Francais, et do 
tout else in Anglais."

The Japanese seem to have no legal or cultural prohibitions 
against using English whenever or where ever they can. It's 
probably a side effect of the fact the Japanese have more 
alphabets than words for snow.

As the Japanese "Engrish" page at www.lumine.net/engrish/ 
illustrates, the Japanese love for the language goes beyond 
using English to convey useful information about what a package 
might contain or how a product might kill you if mishandled. 
English terms are used simply as graphic devices on packaging.

For example, there seems to be no explanation why a day timer 
has the phrase "have a smell of Panda droppings" on its cover 
other than it's set in a nice font.

Maybe something was lost in the translation. There are some 
cute sites that list amusing translation gaffs. Having worked 
with a translator for most of this decade, I've come to 
appreciate what a difficult task it is to translate not just 
words, but preserve the meaning. One has to be not just 
bilingual but bicultural. You could translate a phrase like "oh 
baby, you're hot" as "hello small infant, your temperature is 
high" or "hey lady, you're looking good".

Errors in translation have that "from the mouth of babes" 
quality. They are amusing when they tell a lot more than 
intended or valiantly achieve accuracy through tortured 
structure. The Lost in the Translation site at 
hearsay.simplenet.com/translation/ has a number of good ones. A 
brochure for a car rental company in Tokyo advises how to deal 
with pedestrians: "Trumpet him melodiously at first, but if he 
still obstacles your passage tootle him with vigor."

More humorous translations can be found at 
www.mcn.net/~wleman/humor.htm.

Even native English speakers aren't always decisive in the use 
of terms One of my peeves is signs that use quotation marks 
around words that don't seem to require quotes. Quotes on words 
imply "almost but not quite". The Gallery Of "Misused" 
Quotation Marks at www.juvalamu.com/qmarks/ has a large number 
of examples.

The "exhibits" range from "disturbing" to "disheartening". A 
grocery store sign assures customers that "safety" is important 
to them. In a Valentine's Day Card a grandmother refers to her 
grandchild as "Rebecca". Is the grandmother not sure of her 
name? or is the so-called "Rebecca" in the witness protection 
program?

    Source: geocities.com/lapetitelesson/cs/text

               ( geocities.com/lapetitelesson/cs)                   ( geocities.com/lapetitelesson)