English can be this:
“Come and have a butcher’s at our new products here – they’re lovely jubbly and won’t cost you a load of moolah!”*
But it can also be this:
“Take a look at our newest products here – great quality at a great price.”
Alright, so we don’t generally translate into the kind of English you might hear from an extra in Only Fools and Horses – but we do often use the kinds of idioms you’d expect to hear from native English speakers.
However, we also have some customers who have a lot of their documentation translated into English (alongside local languages) even though their primary markets and locations where their employees are based aren’t English-speaking. That’s because they’re markets/locations where most of the populations have some level of English, so it ends up being something of a lingua franca within those companies.
For us, that means thinking about writing for English speakers at a variety of non-native levels. In many cases, the language has to be stripped back somewhat and plainer than it might be in other circumstances. Here are some examples of what that can mean:
– Erring on the side of shorter sentences: good writing generally contains a mix of longer and shorter sentences to vary the flow, but plainer language often means keeping things short and to the point.
– Avoiding more obscure idioms, or idioms that are specifically British, for example (but not avoiding idioms altogether, as that can make language very boring!).
– Ensuring that the main points come early on in the paragraph, before going into more details. This might mean shuffling the German information around a little.
– Sticking to active voice rather than passive (often a good principle for German > English translation anyway!).
The key takeaway from projects this? You can’t write in exactly the same way for every customer – they all have different needs and unique tones of voice, so it’s important to make sure your English can be flexible too.
*With apologies to those south of the Watford Gap – we’re based in Manchester.
