Cerca tra vari insegnanti di Inglese...
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Professional ethics
Good evening (if you are on my side of the pond). Good morning/afternoon to the rest of the world (LOL, I'm sorry if I'm overcomplicating things... it's just that I don't want to miss any chance to practice my English. I know it may not seem like a big deal, but without wanting to sound exaggerated, it's a step closer to achieving my goals. If any sentence sounds bad/stilted, or if you would never ever use it, please tell me what you would say instead!. Thank you in advance.
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As is mentioned/as mentioned (which is correct?) in an article I read today, people rarely think of translators as having to deal with ethical issues. That may be due to the lack of knowledge about the profession that is still so pervasive today, even though the work of translators is so present in the lives of everyone.
The most infamous case of unethical proceeding that I know of took place in the medical translation field. It can’t be completely chalked up to a translation blunder -the medical staff had a lot to do with how things turned out- had a lot to do , but it serves to illustrate how devastating a bad translation can (can I use come here -> come to be? would that change the meaning of the sentence in any way?) be: In Spanish, it is common to use the word “intoxicado” to refer to food poisoning, in English, though, “intoxicated” refers to the state following the intake of drugs, which is what Willie Rodriguez, the patient involved in this incident, ended up being treated for after a bilingual staff member who acted as the go-between suggested so. Naturally, he wasn’t prepared for the job, and the unwillingness on part of the hospital to provide him with a profesional interpreter led to Willie’s death. The point is that Willie wasn’t neither suffering from food poisoning nor intoxicated: He was suffering from an intracerebral hemorrhage.
That being said, knowing when to turn down an assignment is all part of being profesional. Failing to do so, despite being well aware that you can’t measure up to the standard required, would be nothing short of irresponsible.
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What could this sentence possibly mean?
I came across the following sentence in Stephen King's "Cell":
'Civilization SLIPPED INTO its second dark age ON an unsurprising track of blood but with a speed that could not have been foreseen by even the most pessimistic futurist. By Halloween, every major city from New York to Moscow stank to the empty heavens and the world as it had been was a memory.'
Does it mean that the act of civilization slipping into its second dark age was followed by bloodshed, or that civilization slipped on a track of blood and ended up in a terrible situation?
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Sentences
If there is a word that you would leave out or a chunk of sentence that you would say differently (including this isolated comment), let me know, please! I'm afraid that these sentences are far from sounding natural.
1. If I had begun listening to your video (it was playing in the background, so I was not watching it... does "listening to your video" sound weird?) right when you were speaking in Spanish, it would have never crossed my mind that you are not a native Speaker. Your accent is spot on, really… you could easily pass for an Argentinian.
2. I have yet to meet someone who likes reading and books as much as I do.
3. S: Don’t even think about leaving it in your head, you will more than likely end up forgetting it. Write it down! It won’t even take more than a few seconds..
P: Seconds?
S: Well, it will certainly take way less than trying to remember it when you need it, not to mention the fact that you won't be taking the risk of forgetting it completely! … besides, you’ve told me before that you have the memory of a chicken. I myself can vouch for that.
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Orange Chicken
Good evening: my goal is to sound as natural as possible when using the language. If anything of what I've written sounds stilted or unnatural, I would be grateful if you could suggest an alternative! thank you beforehand.
1. Boil the chicken breast for a bit just to defrost it. If it’s already defrosted, you can skip this step and leave it raw. After all, it’s going into the pan later.
2. Chop it into small chunks and put them into a bowl. Next, season them well with soy sauce and whatever seasoning you would like. It could be ground black pepper, garlic (whether fresh or powdered)… as long as you don’t forget about the soy sauce, it’s completely up to you.
4. Next, add a whole egg, stir the mixture well, add some cornflour and then stir again until all is well blended.
Orange sauce.
Add orange juice into a bowl with soy sauce, sugar (preferably brown), apple cider vinegar and a little cornflour to thicken it up.
Final step:
Just fry the chicken chunks and dry them with napkins or kitchen paper, and put them into a pan the sauce, just so that they don’t get cold.
I know it’s a horribly vague recipe, with no amounts, measures or cooking times… but I will leave all that for when I’m an expert at writing recipes (will the use of “them” instead of “recipes” make people think that I’m refering to “amounts, measures or cooking times” and not to “recipes”?)
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