Re: Wanted: Alternate wording for Law 16Bb1(a)

Hi Robert,

Am 12.07.2016 um 22:44 schrieb Robert Geller:
> Hi,
>
> I'm afraid I haven't been following BLML so much these days, but with
> regard to the point where I was mentioned, the main issue was not
> misunderstanding the English, but it was how to translate the English.
> In other words, whether to literally translate each phrase, or to grasp
> the overall meaning of the sentence or paragraph and rephrase that into
> easy-to-understand Japanese. (This is an age-old question in any
> translation.)

looks like I misunderstood what the problem was, sorry.

>
> A secondary issue was that some of the English was really hard for
> non-native speakers to understand.
>
> My point at that time was that the lawbook was built up over a long
> period of time in rather idiosyncratic English (Grattanese, Kaplanese)
> and that it would be a worthwhile project to edit the English with a
> view to making it easier to translate into all the languages of the
> various Federations(*). (The counterargument is that everyone is coping
> with the present lawbook so let's leave it as is....)
> -------------------------
> *This could be done by a professional editor checked by a team of two or
> three laws experts to make sure the meaning wasn't accidentally changed.

I have made a suggestion, years ago, which I repeat here and now: get a 
number (small number, else nothing gets finished) of non-native "Devil`s 
advocates" who look for ways to misunderstand/mistranslate the proposed 
texts, looking for wordings which may get non-natives into trouble. I 
have _no_ idea how anyone could misinterpret a simple sentence of 
German, except that Germans manage to do so all the time, so (my 
assumption) native speakers of English have similar difficulties. This 
is where the Internet is simply wonderful. People from all over the 
world have no problem in communicating with each other in next to no time...

Best regards
Matthias

>
> Bob
>

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