/misc-files/flawed-english [3.34KB]

Just another brick in the wall [My english is flawed, but...]

(22 April 2003)

I'm French. To communicate with non-french people, I have to speak a
tongue they can understand, obviously. English is often a good choice
in this regard.

But you probably already noticed that my english is far from
perfection. It's an issue, it can even be a serious issue. That's why
I think important to raise the issue here.


***

Formal aspect of a text is important. In some case, it's even more
important than it's fundamental aspect. Simply because how we
understand the fundamental aspect of a text highly depends on the
formal aspect of this text.

Languages are, by nature, imperfect, because they usually imply
polysemy. Polysemy permit you to explain complicated things but you
have to avoid as possible equivocal expressions. Because naturally, to
understand an equivocal speech, we have to imagine, doing
interpretatio.

I used this word, interpretatio, on purpose. This term was used
by romans to designate translation. And it's very explicit: when you
translate, somehow, you interpret. When you speak, when you listen,
you are dealing with a language you learned. So, you are, indeed, doing
interpretatio.

To limitate effect of interpretatio, to communicate, you have
to take care of the formal aspect of your texts and speeches.


***


On an international project, you have to find a way of speaking that
everyone will understand. In the past, latin whould surely have been
picked, or even french. Now english seems to be the wiser choice.

When you are dealing with people that do not share with you a same
cultural background, communicating is an hard task, as risks of
interpretatio are naturally more important.

***

But, communicating is a meaning, not a purpose, in most of the
cases. The goal is not to communicate, normally, but to do something
together. And so you cannot expect people you are dealing with to speak
perfectly your own tongue, neither they can expect from you to speak
perfectly their tongue.

So you have to accept this situation and deal with.

In fact, you have only two options. On one hand, you can consider that
you are wasting time on trying to collaborate ; and so you should stop
working with people that do not speak your own language as perfectly
as you. On another hand, you can consider that people can bring you
much and for that reason you accept to make an extra effort.

***

Personally, the second option seems the best to me ; I do not think
that language is a good criterion to evaluate what can someone bring
to a project, until this project is not litterature studies. So I
recommend to minimize the issue, even if it means writing two mails
instead of one to explain something.

However, it does not mean that grammar should be neglected. For the
reasons already detailled, it's better to write as correctly as possible
; and life is a learning process. So if you notice serious errors in
what I wrote, formally speaking, I will appreciate a short remark
about it in private.

Finally, if you are favorable to the first option and want to discuss
about it, you'll surely understand that I will not read your
message(s) until you write it(them) in French - that's a natural
consequence of your opinion.



Note: If the title does not speak to you, listen The Wall from Pink
Floyd.

(Last update: $Date: 2003/04/22 18:31:05 $)

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