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And of all those practices you describe, I think the main one that deserves
consideration is refraining from using idiom, or metaphorical language of
any kind, in a technical document which is intended for use outside your own
culture. Translating a language is comparitively simple: translating a
cultural idiom is sometimes far from simple. What's clear and obvious to me
in my culture is not necessarily either clear or obvious to you in yours,
regardless of how familiar we both are with the English language. It may
seem an unnecessary restriction, but think about it: before 1997, how many
people outside the UK would have understood if I'd said we don't want the
full monty?
Horses for courses. (Less idiomatically, I mean that the audience for whom
the document is being written should determine the kind of language that you
use: the wider the audience, the less metaphorical.)
I think that sometimes people, in haste or in confusion, suggest those
practices for ease of translation. But I think the better reason (and
probably the one that is intended) is to aid comprehension _in English_ by
those with less facility in the language than the writer has. This may
include non-native speakers as well as native speakers with poor reading
skills.
So the practices you are asking about may affect the way a non-native
speaker effects a mental translation while reading the simplified English
text, for example; but this does not bear directly on the issues that arise
when a skilled human translator gets involved.
Dick
>>
>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.
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