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The articles presented here are primarily intended to assist those of our Flemish and francophone clients who are involved in the writing, translation or proofreading of documents for publication in English. These articles should not be seen as English lessons - they are simply examples of errors that we frequently encounter during the course of our work.

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COMMON ERRORS IN WRITTEN ENGLISH No.1

by Brian Flack MCB*

Learning a foreign language academically is virtually the same as entering a minefield. After several years of study, students are expected to pass examinations and to obtain certificates of proficiency. At work, they are able to converse freely in the language, to participate in business meetings, make presentations and to write letters, e-mails and reports. However, is their standard of writing adequate for publication? Do they write without making a single grammatical error? Are the people who check their work prior to publication really correct in the changes they make?

Children brought up in a bi-lingual or even multilingual family environment have an enormous advantage when they reach adulthood. They can usually speak the languages they learnt in infancy without any trace of accent. That is very rare for people who only studied a foreign language at school or university. The same applies to written work in a foreign language. It is rare for an academic student to learn to write in another language without the influence of his/her mother-tongue causing him/her to make even minor grammatical errors.

With thirty-five years of experience in the world of English language publication in Belgium, I have seen a substantial number of original articles written in English by both Flemish and francophone authors. The standard is frequently excellent and more than adequate for the purpose of passing high level examinations. However, the domain of commercial publication generally demands better than adequate; it expects close to perfection.

In spoken English, so long as you can make yourself understood, no-one will correct your errors – that would be impolite – but the reader of an article cannot be expected to ‘listen’ to what he is reading by imagining the accent of the writer. In the same way, it is unlikely that anyone will take the trouble to point out grammatical errors in published material but, think of the damage to the corporate image if a company becomes the subject of ridicule due to such errors appearing in its documentation or advertisements.

Just to illustrate the point, I have compiled a list of the most common errors that I meet in English texts that are sent to me for verification. The first example is the phrase ‘has been’, which is often found in contexts such as:

“The company has been established in 19xx.”

This simple but frequently used phrase is incorrect! It should be:

“The company was established in 19xx.”

The present perfect continuous expression ‘has been’ would only be used to infer an event that took place recently, as in:

“The company has been established but the offices are still under construction” or “My son has been playing in the garden all afternoon but he is indoors now”.

I hope that this small example will be helpful to those who regularly write or edit English language texts and particularly professionals who are concerned about standards in their English language publications.

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COMMON ERRORS IN WRITTEN ENGLISH No.2

by Brian Flack MCB*

The first article in this series dealt with the general context of errors that are frequently made in written English by writers of Dutch or French mother tongue. When writing in a foreign language, the vast majority of people cannot help but be influenced by the logic and rules of the dominant language in their head – the language in which they think. Even those who have had the experience of growing up in a totally bi-lingual or multi-lingual environment will usually have one language that is stronger for them.

In spoken English, so long as you can understand and make yourself understood, that is all that is necessary. If the listener does not fully understand the speaker, the opportunity is usually available to ask for clarification. Unfortunately, the written word is not so forgiving. In particular, the writer does not get a second chance to clarify so it is essential to ‘get in right first time’.

In my many years of working as a translator and proof-reader in Belgium, I have encountered some excellent articles in English by Flemish and francophone writers but I believe it is fair to say that I have never seen an original text that did not in some way identify the writer as ‘non-English’. Even in the rare case that the writing does not contain a single grammatical error, there is either a ‘turn of phrase’ or an inappropriate adjective or an inflection that is ‘not quite right’ for a writer of English mother tongue. This is not a sin or a grave criticism of non-English writers because, as many of my correspondents would agree, we all have the same problem if we attempt to write in another language than our own. Even so, there is no harm in illustrating the traits that frequently identify the non-native writer and that is the purpose of this series of articles.

This time, I would like to draw attention to just two examples of popular words that stand out as being inappropriate for the context in which they are used:

Sensible. This adjective, when used in English, tends to be confusing for francophone writers because it has an entirely different meaning in English to that applied in French. In English, it means the equivalent of sage or raisonnable. So, ‘A sensible person’ means ‘someone who behaves with intelligence’. An alternative use would be ‘sensible clothing’, which means ‘clothing that is appropriate for the occasion’.

A typical misuse of the word would be ‘He is very sensible to the needs of his colleagues’. This should be ‘He is very sensitive to the needs of his colleagues’. Of course, there are many other possible misuses of this word but this example should help to demonstrate that care is needed with this particular ‘false friend’.

Thus. This word is very often used in English by Dutch writers, probably due to the similarity of the Dutch word dus. Modern Dutch-English dictionaries translate dus as ‘so’ or ‘therefore’ and the reason for this is that ‘thus’ has fallen out of common usage in English. It is now considered as too formal for everyday use. The word can still be found in legal and scientific papers but, as with many other English words that have disappeared from general use in recent years, it is now thought of as old-fashioned. Other words in this category would be amongst (among), whilst (while) and hence (consequently), where the more modern equivalent is shown in brackets.

I hope these two examples will be helpful to professionals who would like to ensure that their English language publications are entirely acceptable to the reader.

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COMMON ERRORS IN WRITTEN ENGLISH No. 3

by Brian Flack MCB*

The first two articles in this series dealt with examples of errors that are frequently made in written English by writers of Dutch or French mother tongue.

We all have foreign friends or acquaintances who speak our mother tongue very well but, how many do you know who speak the language so perfectly you cannot hear a trace of a foreign accent. That certainly is rare but even more unusual is to encounter someone who can write in a language that is not their own without a single grammatical mistake or a phrasing error that immediately identifies them as having been educated in a different language.

In this article, I will attempt to illustrate some of the differences in style which tend to confirm that the writer is not of English mother tongue. One of the most striking differences between English and both French and Dutch concerns nouns that have no plural version in English, even though the plural exists in French and Dutch. Typical examples are ‘training’ and ‘information’. This type of noun is known as non-countable because it identifies something that has no numerical value – it is intangible.

Training is, of course, an English word that has been adopted into both French and Dutch as a result of globalisation in the age of technology. However, while you have the plural versions, ‘opleidingen’ in Dutch and ‘formations’ in French, we do not have ‘trainings’ in English – instead, we have ‘training courses’ or ‘training sessions’. This concept is sometimes difficult to grasp but the logic behind it is that ‘training’ is a process or procedure based on the verb ‘to train’. As a noun, it could, for example, be used in the sentence, “Training is given to students on a training course” or, “The training given on the course was intensive”.

Information is another non-countable noun in English. It has the plural form ‘informations’ in French and, although it is frequently found in Flemish texts as ‘informaties’, this is incorrect because Dutch grammar treats this word in the same way as English. We can use the same word with both the singular and plural sense or we can talk about an ‘item of information’ or a number of ‘items of information’. However, in the global sense, the word describes an intangible substance so information cannot be counted.

The plural versions of both of these words are very often found in English language texts created by writers whose mother-tongue is not English.

I hope these examples will be helpful to professionals who write or edit English language texts.

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COMMON ERRORS IN WRITTEN ENGLISH No. 4

by Brian Flack MCB*

The topic for this edition is the apostrophe – a subject that certainly causes native English writers quite a lot of difficulty. Consequently, people of other mother tongues should not be embarrassed if they get it wrong. However, the placement of the apostrophe can make a significant difference to the meaning of the sentence so it is important to ensure that it is used correctly in published documents.

Let us start from the premise that, in both Dutch and French, the apostrophe is used, as in English, to indicate missing letters in a contraction. However, it is not used in French to indicate possession whereas it is used in Dutch to pluralise a noun. There is, therefore, a substantial risk of making a mistake during translation.

In written English, the apostrophe is used in only two situations: contraction and possession.

Contraction: When two words are allowed to run together, for simplicity of speech, the apostrophe is used to indicate the missing letters that are deleted in the process. For example, I am can be contracted to I’m so the apostrophe indicates the missing space and letter ‘a’. Another example would be I cannot or I can not, which can both be shortened to I can’t. There are many other examples, including such expressions as I will not, which contracts into I won’t. (In some regional dialects, this becomes I willn’t). However, I don’t want to get sidetracked by trying to justify illogical contractions.

Possession: In its simplest form, the apostrophe+s added to a noun, indicates ownership of an item as in John’s book or the ship’s compass. It gets a bit confusing if the noun ends with an s because the rule is then that the s following the apostrophe disappears, as in Jesus’ book or James’ car. It should be noted that, in the case of multiple ownership, where the noun is plural, the apostrophe remains in the same position as in the singular form. For example, it is the children’s toys and not the childrens’ toys.

One of the most frequent incorrect uses of the apostrophe is in pluralisation. In English, there is no case for using an apostrophe to pluralise a noun or an acronym, as in How many George’s are there in your office? This should be How many Georges are there in your office? A frequently incorrect use of apostrophes with acronyms is a number of CD’s or DVD’s, which should simply be a number of CDs or DVDs.

There are evidently many more examples that I could cite but my intention in these short articles is only to highlight the importance of correctness for those of you who regularly handle English language texts intended for publication.

brian@flack.be

*Member of the British Association of Communicators in Business

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COMMON ERRORS IN WRITTEN ENGLISH No. 5

by Brian Flack MCB*

One of the aspects of English that we frequently have to discuss with our Belgian clients is syntax. The purpose of this article is, therefore, to provide a simple explanation of the rules that govern English sentence structure.

Excessively long sentences are an annoyance in any language, particularly when it is necessary to read the sentence during a presentation. (The speaker may run out of breath before the sentence is completed.) We therefore generally endeavour to keep sentences reasonably short. However, we also have to adhere to the grammatical rules of sentence structure otherwise what we write becomes nonsense.

In English, the fundamental rule is that any sentence must contain at least a ‘subject’ and ‘predicate’. The ‘subject’ is evidently what the sentence is about while the ‘predicate’ is what the sentence tells the reader about the ‘subject’. For example, “My brother, George, arrived at his office early this morning”, where the ‘subject’ of the sentence is in red and the ‘predicate’ is in blue. The ‘subject’ is always a noun or a noun phrase while the ‘predicate’ always contains a verb. A subsidiary rule is that a sentence cannot start with a ‘conjunction’ (particularly and, but, or & nor). Although you may sometimes see sentences starting with a conjunction in articles written by native English writers, strictly speaking this is incorrect. That’s because the primary purpose of a conjunction is to join two sentences together. If a long sentence is broken into two short sentences, the conjunction is no longer necessary and can be removed. You may notice that the example used above makes perfect sense as a statement and that is a fundamental aspect of an English sentence. It must be understandable in isolation.

In an effort to keep sentences short, I find that non-English writers will frequently do nothing more than chop English sentences into disparate parts. I cannot pretend to mimic the ways in which people of other mother tongues structure English text but I do frequently receive documents that have paragraphs made up of short sentences that the English would regard as nothing more than long sentences broken up by punctuation. Those breaks are often made by inserting a full-stop (.) in front of a conjunction or a noun phrase. The result breaks the rules of English grammar. An example might be:

“I enjoy a glass of wine. And I also like beer.” This is incorrect. It should be either:

“I enjoy a glass of wine and I also like beer.” or “I enjoy a glass of wine. I also like beer.”

It is important not to confuse the laziness of spoken English with the essential formality of printed documents. In particular, corporate documentation that uses informal English can be damaging to the credibility of your business image.

This basic guideline should enable anyone who edits documents in English to recognise the fundamentals of short sentence structure. There are several other rules but those mainly relate to longer, more complex sentences.

brian@flack.be

*Member of the British Association of Communicators in Business

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COMMON ERRORS IN WRITTEN ENGLISH No. 6

by Brian Flack MCB*

In this article, I have decided to revisit the topic of grammatical ‘false friends’ – those words that are either pronounced similarly or have the same spelling in another language but have a different meaning. You usually meet them when you are about to say something spontaneously – the word is almost out of your mouth but you hesitate because you are not sure if it has the meaning you want to convey.

In an earlier article, I mentioned the confusion between the French and English meanings of the word ‘sensible’ (in French, it means ‘sensitive’ but in English, it means ‘intelligent’). However, there are many other examples of both French and Dutch words that are identical or close to English words but have different meanings.

One such word in English is the adjective, actual, meaning ‘real’ – something that truly exists. The very similar word in French ‘actuel/actuelle’ means ‘current’ – something that exists at present. The meaning is similar but not the same. The Dutch word ‘actueel/actuele’ also means ‘current’ but is also employed to mean ‘topical’. So, English people are likely to be confused by the title of the French magazine, “Femme Actuelle”, because they would be tempted to interpret it as “Real Woman” – not quite the image that the publishers would want to convey.

Another word that causes a considerable amount of confusion is the adjective, eventual and its corresponding adverb, ‘eventually’. In English, these words mean ‘final’ or ‘finally’. In French, the words ‘éventuel(le)’ and ‘éventuellement’ mean ‘possible’ and ‘possibly’. In Dutch, the word ‘eventueel’ can be used both as an adjective and an adverb but has the same meaning as the French versions.

There are so many of these words that it is impossible to list them all here. Furthermore, there are so many of these ‘false friends’ in common use that we all have a duty to correct each other if we hear or read such words being used wrongly. This also emphasises the importance of only using native speakers for translation. All too often, I am asked to correct English texts that have been written or translated by someone who is not of English mother tongue. Frequently, the general structure of those documents is very good and they would receive an ‘Excellent’ score in an exam. However, they are not good enough for publication because they contain those little nuances that confirm their non-English origin. On the other hand, they are a very good source for articles like this one.

brian@flack.be

*Member of the British Association of Communicators in Business

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COMMON ERRORS IN WRITTEN ENGLISH No. 7

by Brian Flack MCB*

‘Mastery’ of a foreign language is an ideal that is often sought by people who have a flair for languages. Not satisfied with being ‘excellent’ in their ability with a language, they seek to be so good that they hope to pass for a native speaker/writer. Unfortunately, apart from rare instances of extraordinary ability, this is a goal that is virtually unattainable. Even those who are raised in a bilingual family are more likely to be deficient in both languages or to excel in one - but rarely in both. Consequently, most of us working in the world of language have to accept that nature dictates our ability to deal with foreign languages at a lower level than that of our mother tongue.

The greatest risk for those who seek perfection in a foreign language is that their efforts become exaggerated and they make the mistake of using the language in a way that the native would regard as ‘excessively correct’. The fact is that most writers and speakers do not use their mother-tongue with grammatical perfection. It is only in elite literature that we find a level of language that we admire for its excellence rather than for its ability to convey an everyday message.

If we accept then that the most important requirement of language is to communicate effectively, we must also accept that the speaker/writer has to be able to use every twist and turn of the language in its contemporary form. In the world of publicity, in particular, that is a vital requirement. Just one flawed word or a phrase that fails to ‘click’ with the target audience and the whole campaign is in ruins. Unfortunately, the reason for the failure of the campaign is not always evident. The copywriter speaks and writes excellent French, Dutch and English, even though his mother tongue is actually one of the Scandinavian languages. The guy is linguistically talented but, sadly, his writing in all three of the campaign languages - although great for most purposes - lacks the final touch that is needed to inspire the target purchaser to go out and buy the product.

Although this is a totally fictitious scenario, it serves to emphasise the added value that a native copywriter brings to the table when there is an important message to communicate. This applies not only to English but to any modern language in which the impact of the words used is dependent on a level of mastery that is unlikely to be found in anyone but a native speaker/writer of the language of the intended reader.

For the reasons listed above, I submit that there is an enormous advantage to be found in the use of native copywriters when a campaign is launched in a foreign language. Whether the campaign text is to be originated in that language or is to be translated/adapted from another language, the only way to be sure that there is a 100% connection between the writer and the audience is that both have precisely the same interpretation of the message.

brian@flack.be

*Member of the British Association of Communicators in Business