I edit books for a company in Spain. Some books are written in a foreign language and "translated" into English by another person on their staff (or maybe they just use Google Translate, I can't tell); some are written in "English" by foreign-language speakers who think they know English.
You can't imagine the difficulty I have convincing the bossman that the translations/texts are NOT proper English. For example, for the last two weeks, we've been wrangling about my editing a book (about the Japanese Army in WWII) that was written by a "very educated Spaniard" that has been living in the US for 20 years. They just can't believe that he can't write flawless English - they keep telling me he's "
very educated and he's lived in the US for 20 years!"
Yeah, well... you know how many people have lived here their
entire lives and can't write a proper sentence?
To be fair, this particular author has done an admirable job, but it still ain't right. One tiny example: he doesn't understand the difference between
were and
where (uses
were every time).
And I did enjoy this sentence:
Quote:
|
Extreme heat and humidity combined with exhausting marches suffocated the men and provoked continuous dismals among the troops.
|
Dismals!