On 9/24/06, habj <sweetadelaide(a)gmail.com> wrote:
As Alphaia pointed out, puns and many types of jokes
are typically
impossible to translate.
[...]
If you make sure not to use too difficult words, and
avoid jokes at all
cost, and not even wikilink freely... you risk a bunch of pretty colourless
statement, maybe. Do we want to rob those who speak good English of the
possibilities to use the full scale of their language?
In my impression Angela Beesley has been always skillful to express
her ideas in a natural, warming and quite clear even to EFL (English
as foreign lang) speakers. It may be relevant to her experience of
working for dyslexia children and skill of writing in Simple English.
It may be not impossible to write fravored and simple statement,
however, it suggests to require training and skills.
It is true for us to be concious of our own wording. I myself have
been sometimes complainted of difficulties on my wording; too much
rhethorical, pedantic etc. But it is worthy to try if we are
interested in communicating with a broader audience.
One possible compensation for English native speakers may be
submitting two versions. Normal one and simpler ones. Consider to
write with around 3,000 word vocaburary (I admit it may sound
shabby...), for example.
During Election, we have faced some challanges on communications.
Translation and its difficulty, it is just a part of iceberg. For
better future and sanity of our tirelessly expanding community, those
challanges will be good to be described and exmained carefully as
potential signs things we haven't been aware as total.
--
Kizu Naoko
Wikiquote:
http://wikiquote.org
* vox populi, vox dei *