writing

This week I'm in for a change, so I thought I'm going to feature details of problems that cropped up in my homework for Ms Welland. We had to, as you all know, do up a "Chinglish" (which is a really unfortunate blend of Chinese and English) text, which was studded with mistakes.

To do so was an enormous challenge, but if you wish to be a translator or interpreter, you should learn how to deal with such texts.

My biggest mistake was my belief that some collocations exist in English when they actually don't. I thought that you could say that a bag is balanced and stable, but this is certainly not possible in English.

Although I had my quota of mistakes, this exercise was extremely useful. After all, a prospective translator or interpreter cannot be fooled that he/she will only receive "picture-postcard" texts to translate.

For you who aren't in Ms Wellands class, access this text, if it interest you via www.silverladder.com