Lost in Translation

[Glinda]

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:

Extreme heat and humidity combined with exhausting marches suffocated the men and provoked continuous dismals among the troops.

Dismals!