Not Writing for Translation (was RE: Re(2): Number/Figure)

[Jim Shaeffer <jims -at- spsi -dot- com>]

Jan Henning wrote: 
> 
> As somebody who does translations myself <snip> 
> 
> The way you do technical translations*, IMHO, is to read the original
> text, gather its meaning, and write a text in the target language that
> conveys the same meaning while being as similar as possible - "as
> possible" being the operative phrase. The clarity and > correctness of 
> the translated text are paramount, and if this means translating a word 
> as something else than what the dictionary says, then so be it.
> 
> Using this technique, the question does not arise whether words are
> easily translatable or whether a word results in the correct 
> translation, because the concepts are translated, not the words.
> 
This makes sense to me. However, does this imply that we ignore the 
continual exhortations that we should write for ease of translation? 
This advice appears again and again, leading to things like Simplified 
English, lack of idiom, avoidance of prepositions, etc. ad nauseum. 

Jim Shaeffer (jims -at- spsi -dot- com)


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