************************************************************** * * * CYBERSPACE * * A biweekly column on net culture appearing * * in the Toronto Sunday Sun * * * * Copyright 1999 Karl Mamer * * Free for online distribution * * All Rights Reserved * * Direct comments and questions to: * * * * * ************************************************************** 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?