EU-funded twaddle - follow-up

Just as I promised on Sunday, I made several attempts to reach a person who heads a department (one of several in Mazovian Unit of Implementing Programmes European) which runs 'Human Capital' projects. To no avail, I was only informed all calls, to ensure my safety and satisfaction, are recorded, and was not in the luck to get through. I was surely calling during a coffee break, a second breakfast break, a lunch break, an afternoon break or during a very important meeting.

So we don't know what the attitude of rubbish-producer is.

Coincidentally, Gazeta Stołeczna ran a very similar story on errors in leaflets for foreign diplomats prepared by Warsaw Town Hall. Neither at work (due to some idiotic restrictions), nor at home (didn't feel like tampering the screen resolution settings) could I enlarge the scans, so I can't assess the correctness of the original leaflets nor the proofreader's remarks. The translator who'd sent in the dreadful piece to Stołeczna's editors, was slated in the comment thread under the article. Well, in this country everyone knows best.

PS. Good news - the exam... passed :) Nice to feel hard work bears fruits.

EU-funded twaddle in a newspaper

It has been a while (almost three years have passed by) since I last cracked down on ghastly use of English (I read it over today and found myself in stitches). Absence of the topic on PES does not directly imply the problem has disappeared. Probably after I began working for a Poland-based company in which English is used every day I simply got accustomed to Poles mangling the language and ceased to find it so appalling. But yesterday I sat back in my armchair, opened the Friday edition of Gazeta Stołeczna to find this…

I felt under my skin this announcement was noteworthy. I took a glance on it, then another one, then read it carefully, grabbed a pen, a minute later I knew I would not resist the temptation to tear it to pieces on the blog.

The heading… The man, how about replacing it with Human capital, fixed expression popular in English that often goes together with investment?

Entity name… What a peculiar word order... Implementing Programmes European. OK, in Polish you can try putting cart before the horse, in English, it is not advisable…

What the Mazovian Unit of Implementing Programmes European wants to publicly announce is squeezed into 81-word long sentence. Yes, one sentence is made up of 81 words, in line with KISS (keep it short and simple) rule. The same message could have been conveyed in 20 words I guess. But stretching it to quadrupled number for sure was meant to stress importance and erudition of the author, hence my scribble: “może k… dłuższe?”. How pompous, how turgid…

Scheduled for realisation. I have had a go at translating the Polish verb realizować twice, here and here. Third time would not be lucky. Observant readers should also note emphasis the author put on consistency – a few lines down they wrote realized. In British English you can use “s” or “z” (the former is preferred), when words end with “ise/ize”, but a good practice is to stick to one of them.

Now section 1 – Support for people … category, including:, 36 words in total. How about getting it across in merely 19 words: “Outplacement programmes for the redundant, to be made redundant or at risk of redundancy for employer-related reasons, including:”. My editorial skills fail here a bit, the to be made redundant, does not sound OK to me. Any better translation of przewidzianych do zwolnienia?

One of bullets in section 1 goes: A project participants subsidized employment with a new employer. Now finally jaw drops open. Hard to turn it around; my proposal is subsidies for employers hiring project participants – can it be any better?

Next bullet and the jaw refuses to move up. It is winter so at least I am not likely to swallow an insect. to launch economic activity sound exactly like rozpocząć działalność gospodarczą, but to start a business sounds natural… And why through using? Nine words after economic activity could be swapped for in form of.

Minimal salary – I know minimal is more similar to Polish word minimalny, but minimum has the same meaning, which should tip the scales for the former if the hapless compiler was weighing up which of the words they should use.

Within the framework, in the field of – are examples of phrases that are not purely incorrect, but in English which favours simplicity they somehow disturb natural flow of communication. Right?

Section 2 and here we go again, this could do with at least a dozen words more, as complexity or Research and analyses is still insufficient.

Januaryr? Spell-checker on?

Deadline for submission of the applications is determined by the date of submission of the application… Does it hang together at all? The intent of the author, as it later turned out, was not to write what the latest date applications can be submitted was, but… that an application is deemed to be submitted exactly when it is submitted to the Agency’s office. O terminie złożenia wniosku decyduje data złożenia wniosku. Really confused now?

Now it has been last straw, let’s speak it out straightforwardly – this announcement is a linguistic piece of shit.

localized”. Maybe it sounds dissimilar to zlokalizowany, but if there is such word in English as located, there is a likelihood that it fits better.

The next paragraph, starting with All entities may be granted – can somebody tell me what the hell they wanted to say? This is a classic example of bureaucratic drivel!

Next sentence is bolded and underlined to bring another uncanny example of word order. No comment.

Here I am running out of patience. Logos at the bottom inform me the advertisement was co-paid from EU funds. This is what zillions of money that feed EU bloated bureaucratic apparatus are spent for – let’s face it, this is, not to mince words, a load of crap.

Devastated by the content of the advertisement, I flipped the page and found… 

 
a source document in Polish, my native language. It dawned on me, everything cleared up. As usual, garbage in, garbage out. The announcement in Polish is also written in the same official puffed-up style. Load of crap in the target language is just an aftermath of load of crap in the source language.

The story behind it was also probably same as always – an inferior, mediocre clerk thought the less plain and clear the language they use, the more educated they appear. More civilised people prove their superiority by explaining complicated issues in simple words, so that everyone can grasp them. In the kingdom of Polish officialdom it goes the other way round. And then a person who is said to know English best (yes, best, meaning possibly well) in an office was told to translate it into English. It might have not been done that poorly, but the translation could have been checked by a snotty superior of the translator and “improved”. The outcome leaves an educated native speaker at least dazed.

How long before I see decent Polish to English translations? Do not think I am going to take it lying down. On Tuesday I have a day off to drive my grandfather to a doctor in the morning, but I will have a free afternoon and I will take the trouble to call the Mazovian Unit of Implementing Programmes European and tell them politely their investment in The Man fills me with anger and shame. I bet they will not understand, nor care, but such practices should not be put up with!

Perfect - Autobiografia - the third stab at it

These days, where ordinary pulp stands for popular music it's good to look back on the days I can't even remember and reminesce the timeless, magnificent songs. Those with lofty lyrics, carrying several messages between the lines, telling remarkable stories, memorable, embedded in deeper cultural or historical context, are particlarly hard to translate into a foreign language.

One of such songs is Autobiografia, by Perfect. The song was released in 1982, in the dead of martial law and tells a story of one man's life, set in the gloom and hopelessness of socialist Poland.

I've long planned to translate it into English. The task was to be particularly difficult, a few times I set out to do it, to no avail. Just a few days ago I discovered other English-language bloggers had read my mind and had done the job. Pacze Moj dedicated two posts, with two different translations, one more literal, the other more poetical. Then it turned out Pan Steeva had another try on it. As native speakers they've done a great job, I, as a Pole, would not be capable of. But after all I read Pan Steeva's version and decided to enhance it a little bit.

The final translation below (copyrights generally attibuted to Pacze Moj, Pan Steeva and Student SGH).

I was only ten:

We first heard about him then;

In my basement was our club.

My pal's radio played:

Then 'Blue Suede Shoes' I first heard

And I couldn't sleep that night.

Wind of change would blow

The imprisoned were let go

Once again, we laughed and joked.

Café’s buzzing scene,

Like tornadoes, jazz blew clean:

Just to play

My wish was.

Father, God knows where

Those days he would go astray.

Me? My finger nail came off,

Shavings out of picks

Played the guitar, learnt the tricks.

And I found the thrill of sex.

Music Postcard craze,

Found five hundred in those days;

Not a single pair of jeans

Come Saturday night

Was Luxembourg, drinks, free house

And we felt

Lust for life!

There were us three.

Though in our blood we were free,

With one goal stuck deep in our minds:

In several years,

Have the world at our heels,

Never hard up.

Alpaga plonk,

And discussions 'til dawn,

Our spirits were always awake.

Who punched whose nose?

And whose tears for this flowed

Things happening.

Separated us,

Perfect Pola Raska's face;

All ready to lay down our lives.

On a summer night,

On a blanket in moonlight,

What I wanted then, I found.

She said quick to me that our problems they might be.

I just had my homework done;

She turned up the heat.

After some time, we don't meet.

Once again,

Me alone.

Roles go in vain,

they can't relieve my pain

Life has taught me much more than they did.

Dossed on the floor,

I was wasting my time.

My greatest time

Pub far away

Klezmer asked me to play;

So much rubbish that still I go red.

One certain day,

Figured out that I knew:

Nothing at all.

Hearing my past,

Overcoming at last

Coming real was my greatest dream then

The thousandth crowd,

Drinking words from my mouth,

All loving me.

A hotel, a fan,

Saying "recorder I ran

That's just how a real throat should sing".

I open the door,

Saying nothing at all:

Walls never can

So it was doable. Are there still untranslatable songs, or does it just take a skillful translator to render the lyrics, rhymes, subtexts?

Hats off to all skillful translators (no, not to me).

Another busy weekend ahead, next posting comes probably on Thursday, when I'm taking a day off.

Psalm stojących w kolejce / Queuers’ psalm

Za czym kolejka ta stoi?
Po szarość, po szarość, po szarość.
Na co w kolejce tej czekasz?
Na starość, na starość, na starość.
Co kupisz, gdy dojdziesz?
Zmęczenie, zmęczenie, zmęczenie.
Co przyniesiesz do domu?
Kamienne zwątpienie, zwątpienie

Bądź jak kamień, stój, wytrzymaj
Kiedyś te kamienie drgną
I polecą jak lawina
Przez noc.
Przez noc
Przez noc.

What are they queuing for?
For greyness, for greyness, for greyness.
What are you waiting about for?
For old age, for old age, for old age.
What will you buy when it’s your turn?
Tiredness, tiredness, tiredness.
What will you bring home?
Doubt, doubt, stone doubt.

Be like stone, stand, withstand.
We will leave no stone unturned.
And they’ll slide like an avalanche
Through the night
Through the night

I can’t proudly admit I managed to retain the rhythm, singing my translation would be a breakneck task, but there’s a reason to look back on the bleak days just before Solidarity rose up.

How (not) to apply for a job in English

This blog would have been deficient in valuable postings if there hadn’t been a month without bad-English rant. In the next episode of the series your favourite blogger is cracking down on a letter of application he has found somewhere in the Polish Internet.

At the beginning of the week I had to face a challenge of writing a letter of application in English. Whenever I speak about list motywacyjny with my Polish friends, we end up coming to a conclusion that applicants usually write there so-called pierdoły (hard to translate Polish phrases, in this context meaning “everything and nothing”). We all prefer filling in application form, where we provide the company with all information it wants to have about us and answer specific questions – any both parties are happy.

This time, although I know general rules and layout of this sort of letters, I felt slightly insecure and decided to look for some examples of letters of application in the Net. Out of a habit, I visited the most popular Polish portal for job-seekers to find this baffling example of use of English. (Needless to say I eventually wrote the letter myself)

The author of the guide snows her readers with several priceless advice, such as:

W angielskim liście również w innym miejscu umieszcza się dane nadawcy i firmy – data i dane firmy są po lewej stronie, a twoje nieco wyżej, po prawej. W angielskich standardach obowiązuje również system blokowy – nowy akapit od nowej linijki, bez wcięcia.

As far as I’m concerned there are two layouts:
1. British (also called semi-blocked), where addresser appears at the top, to the right, below, also to the right you put date and further down, to the left you place addressee, new paragraphs start with indentions.
2. American (also called fully-blocked), where everything is aligned to the left, paragraphs have no indentions, but are separated by a gap.

Nie wygłupiaj się! Jeśli nie znasz języka na tyle, żeby samodzielnie napisać list motywacyjny po angielsku, to nawet nie zaczynaj!

Scroll down to check if the author of this sentence practises what she preaches.

Przeczytaj, ale nie przepisuj! Każdy list powinien być unikalny, a wzory są tylko po to, aby czerpać inspirację!

Rewrite the masterpiece below? Who’s so determined to have their application rejected right away? That would be a shot in a foot! But this letter definitely filled me with inspiration – to compile this post.

LIST MOTYWACYJNY

For sure every recruiter who doesn’t know Polish well will understand this title.

Mateusz Wiśniewski

Tel. 505 000 000

mateusz.wisniewski@email.pl

Mr. Karol Napiórkowski

ABCD Company

HR Department

I still can’t make out to which layout the author sticks. The very content suggests it’s the American one, but the addresses made me stumped – left to the right, right to the left, the other way round, coincidental lack of punctuation, maybe some other features (Mr. Karol?) leave a more experienced reader devastated.

Now let’s tear the content into pieces…

Dear Mr. Napiórkowski,

I am writing in regards to your current Human Resources Development Project Manager opening of which I got to know from "XYZ newspaper", August 23, 2005.

With regard to the first sentence of your letter I would like to remind you that regards are at the end of a letter, a rather private one. Why does it seem to me that “XYZ newspaper” is Mr Wiśniewski’s buddy?

Having worked in this profession, I am strongly convinced that my former experience and competence will be of great value for your organization.

Has the experience been given the sack? How about words such as past or previous?

As a this year graduate of Psychology, I present a high level of human resources academic knowledge as my major course was "Psychology in HR Management".

This year’s series of nasty posts labelled ‘translation’ presents a high level of spitefulness of the author of this blog, as he specialises in seeking out absurdities.

During my studies I was involved in many HR projects e.g. preparing recruitment tests for temporary employment agencies. I also did a research of corporate recruiting strategies concerning my MA thesis.

Or was it your MA thesis that concerned recruitment strategies?

I was also given an opportunity to work as a chief career counselor in the University Career Office. Over the last year I have completed more than 30 recruitment campaigns, none of which turned out to be a failure (reference upon request).

Passive voice sounds a tad bombastic but let’s brush it aside and focus on the content. The applicant must be a born optimist. For a pessimist all campaigns (or rather projects) would prove successful, an optimist will write żadna z nich nie okazała się porażką. I like the Polish word porażka, it carries such a huge variety of meanings.

Irrespective of my age and short experience, I am able to contribute in the same matter to the success of your organization.

Irrespective (who cares if words like ‘despite’ exist at all) of my efforts to grasp the meaning of “in the same matter” part I still find myself unable to decipher author’s intentions…

HR projects lie in the sphere of my strong interest. Bearing a challenge of managing a group of people is a motivation itself for me.

Projekty z zakresu zarządzania zasobami ludzkimi leżą w sferze mojego mocnego zainteresowania. Poniesienie wyzwania jakim jest kierowanie grupą ludzi jest dla mnie motywacją samą w sobie. Maybe if I translate it into Polish someone realises what kind of drivel we are facing.

Moreover my professional experience allows me to motivate subordinates effectively. I am not afraid of confronting problems and have skills of solving them – thanks to my academic competence as well as my high level interpersonal skills.

Experience is short but professional… I am running out of bright ideas on how to confront the problem of subprime translations and my high level ridiculing skills are declining…

I am a responsible and at the same time spontaneous person and have been recognized as one who embraces creativity and new ideas.

I am writing this post and at the same time I am laughing out loud and wondering, in which context the verb ‘to embrace’ was used. Probably in none of three ones (to accept, to hug, to include) I know.

For more detailed information please refer to my enclosed resume. I am eager to further discuss my qualifications during the interview. Thank you in advance for your generous consideration.

The word chętnie is indeed not one those which translate easily into English, but English has a few fixed expressions which may be used in the final paragraph, for instance: I would be glad to…

I anyone wants to comment on the last sentence, please feel free to snow me with your generous considerations. Thank you from the mountain for your contribution.

Sincerely,

Mateusz Wiśniewski

(it’s not my real name, just a signature copied from the letter) By not adding ‘Yours’ the author shows he is quite thrifty – this shrewd move helps someone save on ink.

And today’s final part is an old chestnut – use of English by SGH staff.

Dear readers! Posting next post is canceled at 23 and 24 of April. Additional posting will be postponed from 26 of April to 25 of April.

Cock-up happens

As a popular saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. This time I can’t pick on the intentions. Poland should promote itself and its universities abroad and agreeably, it can’t be done in Polish. In order to address foreign students you have to prepare a guide in a language virtually everyone knows and as you guess, the only language to meet this criterion is English.

Study in Poland is a new initiative launched with a view to promote Polish higher education system and aimed at students and scholars from abroad. Perspektywy Foundation which is behind the project has set up a website and printed a guide for the foreign students, both in English. And here’s the hitch. The English language, you know what I mean.

The brochure I’m ranting about is a compilation of general information about Poland (example: actual exchange rates: www.nbp.pl, I have no doubt the exchange rates published at central bank’s website are actual, but didn’t they mean current? And look at the approximate rates. 1 EUR = 3,59 PLN, 1 USD = 2,45 PLN. They’re neither actual, nor current...

My school also has its two pages in the guide. As the editors have written in a disclaimer, they take no responsibility for the information on the particular universities, since they had been provided by the schools themselves.

Let’s take a look at what my school has written…

1) “SGH offers many opportunities to study economics and social studies”. The author of this blog has chosen to study financial studies.

2) “programes”, “buisiness” – has anybody run a spellcheck?

3) “… we also offer post-graduate studies and vocational trainings for…” Is SGH a vocational school? Does it run courses for carpenters, or welders? It is not enough to check how to translate zawodowy into English. But after all there were attempts to turn SGH into a vocational school.

4) “a system of academic grades which are easy to read…” Once again, I thought a phrase “academic degree” is relatively commonly used and is a good equivalent of Polish stopień naukowy.

5) “a first cycle (Bachelor) geared to the employment market”. Bachelor is an unmarried man, Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Science are academic degrees, someone can have BA in a certain discipline, but not to be a Bachelor of Arts in sth (yes, I did make errors on this blog). And why “geared to” and not “labour market-oriented”? I won’t have a go at “cycle”, no matter how strange it sounds, it is used in official documents.

6) “cooperating / in collaboration with other universities” – maybe one day Poles will learn a nice English equivalent of współpraca is “partnership” (though it’s not an actual error)

7) “Postgraduate studies, with abundance of faculties…” Once they use hyphen, the other time they omit it, and why abundance? Isn’t it too formal or literary, wouldn’t simple “variety” suit better?

8) “SGH has been a centre for scientific research in economics and management science”. Should it be “of” instead of “for”? Isn’t the word “science” at the end totally superfluous? Wouldn’t it sound better as “SGH has been an academic centre of research in economics and management”?

9) “1,5 thousand publications”. Again, you can tell me I made the same error and I concede. Let’s illustrate it with an example: the number three thousand seven hundred ninety two point seventy eight would be written in Polish convention as 3.792,78 or 3 792,78, but in English it goes 3,792.78, so…

10) “Every year, the SGH publishes a bilingual, Polish & English report on the competitiveness of the country’s economy and around 150 EXPERTISES. Brush aside the first comma, but let’s examine the report. What is a Polish or English report? What determines a Polishness of a report? A report can be published in both Polish and in English. Meanwhile instead of “the country’s”, why not “Polish economy”? And the accursed EKSPERTYZA, which is expert opinion / report / evaluation / examination. Expertise is biegłość, wysoka kompetencja, but it sounds similarly, so a compiler didn’t take a trouble and used a similar word...

11) “faculty”, “dormitories”. The whole text is written in BrE, just some AmE words don’t seem to fit. Choose one type of English and stick to it, replace it with “(academic) staff” and “halls of residence”.

12) “Fields of study in English:” – the vexed question how to translate kierunek studiów. I would stray from the original Polish phrase and apply “programmes run in English:”.

13) And look how deftly those “fields of study” were translated”: “finance and accountancy”, “spatial economics”, “social politics”. They are respectively: “finance and accounting”, “land management”, “social policy”. I thought it would be hard to make an error there, but they knew how to amaze me.

14) I am dedicating a separate paragraph to a translation of międzynarodowe stosunki gospodarcze, translated as “international economic relations”. Once “international economics” (correct translation) was brought into Poland in 1960s, a communist science committee didn’t agree for a name ekonomia międzynarodowa and it was renamed międzynarodowe stosunki gospodarcze, just not to tease one stupid party official.

15) “The teaching facilities of the Warsaw School of Economics campus include five buildings, with the newest of them built in 2006.” They used a good word, but in a wrong part of the sentence. How about: “The teaching facilities of the Warsaw School of Economics campus are made up of five buildings, including the newest one, built in 2006.”

16) And the sentence which crowns the disastrous piece is: “Beside lectures and classes, students cooperate in REALISING PROJECTS concerning all spheres of life…”
I really I wish I had somebody I could take comfort in beside me… And the second glaring error to demonstrate the expertise of a hapless compiler. Leave out the fact that whenever I hear the word realizować I feel like committing a suicide and let me confine to two hints: realizować project (I detest both words) is “to develop a project”, or “to complete a project”, if you want to say zrealizować.
Apart from attending classes / lectures and workshops (since lecture is a type of a class) students develop projects related to all spheres of life…

I appreciate any critical remarks on the ranting above, mostly the ones on the errors I have made.

I can connive at clumsiness and spelling errors, but EXPERTISE and REALISE PROJECTS are unacceptable. Funnily enough, I managed to envisage it (both words are listed in the post dated 14 May 2009). It turns out it is much easier to predict Poles’ problems with English than stock market trends!

At first I blamed a(n anonymous) compiler, but it was wicked of me. I have nothing against a person who wrote it, they may be a good professional with intermediate command of English and what they have done is not blameworthy.
The writer is for me like a third-year student of medicine who performs a complicated surgery in a hospital. They might be a talented student, but not capable of performing a task they had taken up. Here’s what happened, this person shouldn’t have been assigned a task of writing information in English. And who actually allowed this rubbish to be published?
But there is a much more serious problem. What if the third-year student is the best doctor in the whole hospital? Isn’t it the diagnosis of how it was published?

Now a question to native speakers. Let’s assume that you are keen to support a good cause which is a promotion of Polish universities abroad? How much would you quote for proofreading / editing 100 pages in English? Would hiring a knowledgeable English editor ruin their budget? Does it pay off to save on quality assurance? Are they proud of themselves now, when students are laughing their heads off when they’re reading the hapless booklet?

Rozliczać jego mać!

WARNING: Reading this post may be extremely hazardous and may cause a serious mental breakdown, may make you lose your mind or send you to a funnyfarm. Unless you are a PL -> EN translation freak, then you’re quite likely to find the scribble below considerably amusing.

There’s no blogging without pleasure. I decided to write this post to reward myself for passing exam in cost accounting and dedicate it to my lecturer who used the Polish verb rozliczać at least one hundred times during the term. I’m somehow cocksure she won’t find it and read (computer literacy and command of English are essential to access and understand my blog!). Passing this exam might be regarded as an accomplishment, especially when one got a task “rozliczyć koszty” and scratched his head to figure out what it EXACTLY meant. I managed to get it right and apportioned the shared costs to the departments on the basis of the number of workers employed in each of them. I apologise to all fellow students who also found it difficult. I hope I’m not to blame.

For starters, I have to admit I’m not an expert in accounting. I generally don’t like, not to say I hate it and I don’t further my knowledge in it. Moreover, all courses in this field delivered at my school are run in Polish only, with no reference to English terms, what makes my command of accounting lingo limited. Forgive me my incompetence, but don’t expect it will hold me back from writing. This time…

The post you’re reading, in spite of its form, is meant to be semi-academic, so I should give an overview of its subject matter and set a thesis. Alright then. I want to get to grips with translations of Polish verb rozliczać, damned by translators, focusing mainly on the aspects of its use that can be come across in accounting parrot. I’ll omit the uses from common parlance, like the ones that translate into: settle up, pay off, bring sb to account, account for, in the last days of April also file a tax return, as they’re quite easy and don’t cause very serious problems.

My thesis is that the words rozliczać and rozliczenie are overused and misused by the Poles and often they can’t precisely explain its meaning. They have become catch-all words, if you don’t know which verb to use, use rozliczać and watch your interlocutor’s and reader’s face turning red from anger. Many people think it’s intuitive and everybody understands it. Polish verbs like je*ać or pie**olić, used by lower tiers of Polish society also cover many meanings and are intuitive, the more educated fellows have their rozliczać. In between there’s a middle class who have their załatwiać and kombinować.

Let’s set the ball rolling. Before I analyse my cost accounting notes, I’ll give you small warm-up. Here’s the instruction for students published recently by my school (in Polish). In case the link expires I’ll give you a screenshot. I underlined the sentences I’m grappling with.

Before I beheld this guide I had thought I had known all possible uses and misuses of rozliczać. They proved me wrong and I’ll thank them cause that was a good job!

First sentence goes: According to the resolution of SGH senate, passed on 22 July 2009, the second term students must complete only the courses listed in curriculum and plan of Master’s studies at SGH,.

The second one goes: Before you do this, check carefully your timetable and the list of courses you will have to get credits in.

Why the hell they used the verb rozliczać remains a secret. I put this example here because I fear the worst – they might try to translate it into English and the effect might be devastating.
No wonder they have problems with English, if they can’t even express themselves in Polish clearly and correctly.

1. Strata poniesiona w danym okresie może być rozliczana na zyski z pięciu kolejnych okresów sprawozdawczych. = A loss incurred in a given period can be offset against profits made in the next five reporting / accounting periods.

2. Rozliczenia międzyokresowe kosztów bierne i czynne = accruals and prepayments. Still quite simple.

SHOUT: a thought for today. Once again you are provided with a screenshot. The framed maxim reads: “Accounting exists because we must not trust one another”. I blame mistrust for many things in Poland so may it be the scapegoat blamed for the existence of the rozliczać.

3. Prenumarata ”Tygodnika X” jest rozliczana w czasie = The subscription of “X Weekly” is amortised over a period of time.

4. Wskaźnika tego używa się do rozliczania kosztów na komórki przedsiębiorstwa = This ratio is used to allocate the costs to firm’s departments.

SHOUT: Bilans wsadu i uzysku. Sporządź bilans wsadu i uzysku w przedsiębiorstwie przemysłu tłuszczowego, wiedząc, że ilościowe zużycie nasion na jednostkę oleju surowego o 100% zawartości tłuszczu wynosi 23 000 kg, a współczynnik zawartości tłuszczu w nasionach – 45,2%. Normatywny współczynnik zaolejenia śrutu w stosunku do wagi nasion to 1%, a normatywny wskaźnik strat oleju w stosunku do wagi nasion wynosi 0,5%. Dodatkowo uzysk z produkcji w postaci oleju surowego – 10 000 kg. Clues: bilans wsadu i uzysku = input and output balance, normatywny = standard, zaolejenie = oil content. If you know what śrut is, how to solve this problem, or why Poland is plagued by Siberian frost, or have any other useful or useless remarks, please leave a comment.

5. Konto rozliczenie kosztów. This is the really a hard nut to crack. In this example I found it really difficult to comprehend what the ultimate goal of keeping this account was. I don’t even know, if it has any equivalent in International Accounting Standards. I can only tell you its used to aggregate and then to break down the costs into other accounts and this account has to be reconciled at the end of each reporting period. My first white flag here, I won’t dare playing at word-building.

6. Rozliczenie kosztów wydziałowych, działalności na koszty produkcji, na inne wydziały, etc. – Here I can tell you the correct English verb once again seems to be ‘to apportion’, I would consider using ‘to divide’ or ‘to allocate’.

SHOUT: I haven’t realised this obvious fact that takes place every week. The next time I hear the word rozliczać I’ll ask myself: “Wednesday, Thursday, Friday does it mean?”

7. We wzajemnych rozliczeniach jako pierwszy rozlicza się ten wydział, który świadczy najwięcej usług na rzecz innych wydziałów = A department which renders to the other departments services in the highest value should account for its costs as a first one. I’m not satisfied with this piece, it sounds clumsy, like the source sentence in Polish.

8. Koszty zmienne są rozliczane według rzeczywistych rozmiarów produkcji, a koszty stałe są rozliczane według planowych rozmiarów produkcji = Variable costs are calculated on the basis of real output, whereas fixed costs are calculated on the basis of planned output. Hence, we have just discovered the next application of the hapless verb.

In this post I tried to prove that rozliczać is a translatable word. It’s a verb, not a noun. The words that tend not to translate are usually nouns. May radish serve as an example. This vegetable is not known in Japan and Japanese language doesn’t have a name for it. A verb express a certain activity which has to named somehow. As long as you understand the meaning of a word precisely and have a sufficient command of another language, you are able to translate it. Click here to see how the professionals are confused by the word – approximately each fourth query concerns this accursed verb, or noun.

Professional translators have a different perspective. They are graduates of English language or applied linguistics and their insight into the topic they deal with is rarely as good as economist’s, I’d hazard a guess. This gives rise to their confusion and pain which is hardly ever eased by dictionaries or colleagues.

It sometimes occurs to me that the best solution would be to cross out this accursed word from dictionaries and make people forget it. But hang on, it actually has its core meaning, as far as I’m concerned represented by the English verb ‘to settle’. I generally avoid using rozliczać like the plague, but I sometimes use it, but in the correct context only. In other instances I replace it with other verbs to get my message across precisely. This problem can be traced back to Polish and or rather its users, native speakers who nurture inaccuracy and low quality of their language. We should change it, unless we want our language to become a pack of rubbish… Am I oversensitive? Read the official documents. Year by year, they are getting harder to understand, more complicated, not to say convoluted. Those officials who draw up those turgid regulations should be fined and then dismissed. More labour force to build motorways or road sweeping crews would do this country much better than a group of layabout who sit behind their desks and come up with twenty-second use of rozliczać!

Exam period pictures

I adore it. My school always knows how to amaze me. Each month its administrative staff put up a funny announcement in English. Here’s the one I spotted yesterday. This time the biggest problem must have been posed by the word ‘postpone’. Clue: in other words, it means ‘to put sth off’, or in a simpler way, to take a decision to do something later than planned, not earlier. But for sure every Pole will understand this sentence, as it’s an excellent literal translation of Egzamin z Business environment in CEE z prof. B. Mrozem został przesunięty z 1 lutego na 21 stycznia.

I won’t go to dziekanat to tell them to correct it, I somehow don’t fancy running a risk of being expelled for reproaching school’s authorities over the quality of English they stand for. I’ll just share with you my proposal on how to correct this clumsy sentence. Here it goes: The exam in Business environment in CEE by Prof. B. Mróz, scheduled for 1 February, has been brought forward to 21 January 2010. Doesn’t it sound better?

And right the one for aficionados of social networking websites. Captions speak for themselves, so I won’t tack on any comments.

That word

Note: I didn’t develop this post on my own. One wise man gave me some inspiration and knowledge, I just combined it with my own ideas and made use of it.

It was a bit silly and a tad mean of me, but I got my courage up and did it. After the last lecture in cost accounting I waited until everyone left the auditorium and went to my lecturer, acting as a daft student, who didn’t understand one certain word (which had been used around twenty of thirty times during almost each lecture), and asked his wise lecturer to enlighten him.

“You know”, she said “I do not know to explain it to you, that word means, what it means”. Dissatisfied with the answer I insisted on further dwelling on the topic and made a second step – I asked for some particular examples. At that stage, the issue of that word cleared up in most of its instances. I was in a hurry, as in a few minutes I had to show up four floors down to take a first exam in this winter’s exam period, so I gave up quite quickly and kindly thanked.

The goal of this weird experiment was not to prove my lecturer was incompetent or something like that (though sometimes something tempts me to do so, but immediately I perish such thoughts – it brings no benefit nor it proves my superiority). It had to highlight a kind of linguistic trap or rather a certain imperfection of Polish language which comes up, whenever the word I asked about has to be translated into English. And don’t think a good dictionary will help, PWN Oxford falls down on it.

I have to admit I do not tolerate that word. Firstly, because it is considered to be intuitive and understood by everyone, only I seem to be slow-witted, cause it does not always seem that obvious to me, and secondly because it is too general and unclear – it has at least a dozen meanings, each often to be distinguished only in a broader context. For example, in cost accounting it often goes together with a word “cost” used in plural. Hence, you can deal with costs in many ways and even though each time you do something different, you almost use that word.

The real problem is that we sometimes tend to use words we have heard many times and which have shaped concepts of their approximate meanings. Or we don’t know other words that could render the same message in a different way. The point here is, apart from linguistic paucity, the inaccuracy. Words which are overused and cover a multitude of meanings tend to be imprecise. It the case of those crucial words, in my opinion, we should try to reformulate our thoughts to give them a unambiguous shape and use clear and precise vocabulary.

The Polish verb I’m ranting on can be translated into English probably in (almost) as many ways, as many meanings it has. The most popular that come to my mind are: to pay, to pay off, to pay back, to claim, to claim back, to settle, to settle up, to expense, to apportion, to account for, to report, to reconcile, to clear, to clear off.

Now a quiz for Poles reading this blog. What word does this post revolve around?

Hint, and another example of use: “I think I won’t be brought to account for my misdeed.”

Uplifting, devastating

Today I’ll let you take in a blend of praising, grumbling and dissomething.

I was delighted to read the report published on Wyborcza.biz, in which Maciej Samsik, journalist of Wyborcza’s business column, x-rays commercials, mostly those of banks, shark loans, financial advisors and telecom operators. Such actions are essential in the education and in the civic society, cause people should be aware of the pitfalls of advertised “bargains” and all “catches” in the suspiciously beneficial contracts. I hold it dear and would love to see more such analyses.

The opposite feelings in me were evoked by the real estate guide by TVN Warszawa. Their report on residential area of Nowa Iwiczna is full of factual errors and misrepresentations. Many of the shots in the footage do not actually show Nowa Iwiczna, bus service 739 does not run through Nowa Iwiczna, its nearest stop is half a mile away from the boundary of the village and distance from the nearest public facilities are much higher than given in the video. And the language, both the voice of the lector and the very content of the report are stilted. Dabbling in translating has sensitised to me that ugly style of Polish – clumsy syntax, bombastic, but trite collocations and illogical sentences are asking for being polished up. I got worked up and posted a comment on journalists’ dependability and erudition.

Ludność wzrosła poprzez budowę nowych osiedli i chęć mieszkania na obrzeżach Warszawy.

This is the most appalling example. In English, a population can rise, but in Polish we use “liczba ludności” and in the context of a small village, it is better to use “liczba mieszkańców”. The corrected sentence will read: Liczba mieszkańców wzrosła na skutek budowy nowych osiedli i mody na mieszkanie na obrzeżach Warszawy.

The poorly written texts lie the core of translators’ ordeal. If the source writing is crappy, the target one is more likely to sound badly. Unless a translator cares and does the editing job. This sentence might also illustrate what many translators grapple with, when they are translating from Polish into English. Polish language gives its user a large dose of freedom when it comes to syntax, German has very strict rules, English lies in the middle, but somewhat closer to German. The fact that it has a correct syntax and lots of constructions is used stylistic devises is often omitted in the teaching process, just like another issue of “natural flow”. The basic problem of the sentence I’m taking into pieces is posed by illogical links. It sounds very dubiously that the rising population is the effect of the new development. Those building were put up because there had been the demand on houses or flats in NI.

A Pole could translate the original sentence without taking any pains to produce anything up-to-standard:

The population grew through the construction of new estates and the willingness to live in the suburbs of Warsaw.

It would be also possible to translate the sentence edited by the author of this blog:

The number of residents rose, as a result of the construction of new estates and the fashion for living in the suburbs of Warsaw.

This also sound poorly, “of” appears three times in one sentence and it surely lacks natural flow, not to mention the syntactic trap.

I came up with two, rather decent translations.

1) Newly built estates and the trend to settle down in the city outskirts have brought about a rise in the number of residents.

2) Springing up development and the suburb-living fad have led to a rise in the number of residents.

It took me around a quarter to get to grips with one sentence, still the biggest flaw is the link between newly built estates and the number of residents. Some elements of those two sentences may be combined to reach a better outcome. If you have any suggestions on how to improve this translation, I will welcome your advice. But fifteen minutes? I think I wouldn’t make a living on translation working in such sluggish pace.

And why the hell haven’t the mentioned clogged up Puławska and commuting nightmare that has become a part of living here?!

The Wednesday afternoon brought the news that Ben Bernanke, the governor of Fed had been awarded the prestigious Time’s Man of the Year title. He is credited with averting a total collapse of financial markets, but the prize reflects only on his past accomplishments and leaves out the ramifications of the current US central bank policy. Economy will sooner or later bear the brunt of excessively low interest rates and quantitative easing. Those who benefit from such policy are the government, which finances and will pay its debts cheaper and financial industry, which uses cheap money to speculate. The ordinary people will sooner or later damn him, like they did with Alan Greenspan (look at the amount of criticism towards him in his wikipedia biography note), if not for the next crisis, then for the inflation tax they will have to pay.

As requested!

Yesterday one of my friends suggested I tackled here the linguistic problem of masło maślane and its translation into English. After a quick look into the matter I found out the aforementioned phrase, which in Polish common parlance describes the phrase in which more than one word in the given phrase denote the same thing, is just an exemplification of linguistic phenomenon, called pleonasm (PL: pleonazm). Why is it not the tautology? The latter consists of different words, unlike in the “buttery butter” example.

Pleonasms are sometimes used as stylistic devices to emphasise the message to be got across, but usually, in the everyday language, they turn out to be redundant and are considered linguistic errors. In Polish, the most glaring and quite often heard ones are (following wikipedia): w miesiącu lipcu (EN: in the month July), spadać w dół (EN: fall downwards, watch out, not “fall down”, in case of which a falling object must reach the ground), cofać się do tyłu (EN: reverse backwards, it gets my goat every time I hear it in Polish…), dalej kontynuować (EN: to continue on), fakt autentyczny (here I’ll take the liberty of translating it into English as: factual fact). The last example could have been heard when flowing from the mouth of silver-tongued ex-prime minister Jarosław K (in the distant parts of the world this man has become (in)famous for being unmarried, living with his mother and not having a bank account nor a driving license).

Less annoying, but also perplexing are the errors concerning abbreviations, like (once again I have drawn on wiki): numer NIP = numer numer identyfikacji podatkowej (EN: TIN number = tax identification number number). Some of the Polish pleonasms have English origins, like płyta CD. CD stands for “compact disc”, which in Polish means płyta kompaktowa. Things tangle up a bit, when it comes to DVD, which in turn stands for “digital video disc”. Unfortunately DVD has not been translated into Polish, so Poles have to use the clumsy płyta DVD phrase. In English such problems also occur. Let’s take the frequently used specific names like: RAM memory = random access memory memory, or ATM machine = automatic teller machine machine.

Any conclusions? Maybe one, partly content-related: after months of playing about with such linguistic quirks I’m still convinced that choosing to study at SGH I haven’t missed my vocation.

English as a challenge...

Today, after a longish getting-round period, I started my exploration of Jacek Koba’s “Tip of the Week”. The book is written in an amusing and witty style and as one of its reviewers (an university professor) said is compiled in a bit chaotic way. However, the very impression of dealing with something written seemingly without rhyme or reason makes the whole experience even more amusing and unlike the quoted professor asserted, it is of much more than little educational value. I will try to write a short review, in the second half of the month, as soon as I go over it.

In first chapter the author addresses what he calls “do’s and don’ts of communication” (which in fact are rather the latter). One of the given advice follows: “If a word in your native language sounds vaguely foreign, for example, koncepcja, kumulować, konsekwentny, perspektywy, etc., you can safely assume that that’s what it will sound like in English, and that all speakers of English as a second language will understand it too, that is, conception, cumulate, consequent, perspectives, etc.” I could follow up with this list and add to it words such as: premia – premium, ekspertyza – expertise, ewidencja – evidence, prowizja – provision, okazja – occasion (there is a context in which this translation is correct, but how about “I bought these trousers for mere fifty zlotys – that was a real occasion.”, or “Last Monday I had the occasion to watch a new film.”?), windykacja – vindication, adekwatny – adequate, lektura – lecture, and so on… I could go on at the problem of false friends endlessly, as it is as old as hills, but it’s not the point now.

I would have even totally forgotten about it, if I had not run across the timetable below, hung next to the dean’s office in my school. Sorry for the quality of the photo, maybe one day I’ll try to carry my camera round.


Session. Dear native speakers of English who don’t know Polish and read this post – do you know what it means? In Polish the word sesja denotes the period of two weeks at the end of term, when the exams are held. I translate it “examination period”. I have looked it up in my monolingual Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary and in a few online monolingual ones and none of them gives the definition of the word “session” as an examination period, but they offer in unison another definition: “The part of a year or of a day during which a school holds classes.” Classes, not exams, and this is used in Scottish and American English. I had not known that meaning until today, but for the more proficient English students it can be misleading. The rest of them will be enlightened by their fellow students and thus they’ll find out what “session” is.

Then my eyes moved upwards and collided with the note below.


My face fell, my jaw dropped open, I felt dizzy, passed out and then was brought round by a sexy nurse… Well, actually my face fell and I only ended up wondering how many errors can be squeezed into one sentence.

Didn’t I noticed everything wrong?

Dodatkowy termin realizacji szkoleń BHP i bibliotecznego został przesunięty do 30 listopada...

The deadline for receiving occupational health and safety training and library training was extended by 30 November? One could insist that "term" refers to the period of time from 1st to 30th November and they transformed the Polish version in such way, but it still sounds clumsy, even if it is correct. But comprehensible? Lost in translation? Who? They or me?

And the phrase in the bracket which I will not dare to quote is the most glaring error I have seen in my school.

I called on dean’s office to report the blatant misuse of English, but I was fobbed off by the lady behind the counter who told me my complaint was irrelevant, as on 2nd December the note was already outdated. But at least she promised to remove it from the noticeboard.

Maybe we shouldn’t bother and stay complacent with our imperfect English? I recounted the story to my father after I had come home and he asked why had I decided to wrangle with the undereducated fishwives. Maybe it is better to let it go downhill, even bearing in mind my school has pretences to be one of the leading schools of economics in the EU?

I feel confused…

Recently bought

After months of getting round I finally went to the bookshop, looked out for a thick navy volume and bought it.


My wonderful copy knocked me back over 160 zlotys (after combining numerous discounts) – PWN Oxford Polish-English dictionary is indeed a bit pricey, but I consider it the best dictionary available on the market and the money spent on it as a profitable investment. Probably no other dictionary has been worked out so well, other publications don’t cover as many idioms, colloquial words and phrases. The work at least doesn’t omit the most problematic phrases (some time ago I coined a new definition of a dictionary – “a book which translates the obvious words, but somehow leaves out those very ones you don’t know”) and offers thousands of examples of usage of different words in different contexts. It’s not ideal of course – still it doesn’t offer a good translation of the word dziadostwo (much depends on how you understand the original word in Polish – what in my family is called dziadostwo doesn’t square much with the definition given by Słownik Języka Polskiego), moreover, it omits a Polish idiom przechodzić ludzkie pojęcie, what could be translated as “pass all beliefs”! As a would-be professional I wouldn’t carelessly rely on its translations of financial or economic terms.

The second item arrived today by traditional mail. I have to say I’m surprised with the quality of postal services – the book was delivered within four working days (sent by economical registered letter) and it wasn’t soaked up as many other letters had I received.


Tip of the Week by Jacek Koba is a record of the author’s advice given to his colleagues at Ernst&Young, where he used to work as a proof-reader. After having a flick through it I consider it a must for Poles who (will) often draw up writings in the corporate setting. Why is it worth buying? It lists errors often made by Polish writers, touches upon the words Poles tend to have problems with and gives advice on how to write in a plain and comprehensible English. The book is available at the auctions put up by this allegro user – a representative of Altravox publishing office. It cost me only 17,99 zł, which I find dirt cheap, not to mention delivery is free of charge. So, my dear schoolmates, log in to your allegro accounts and keep it under your desk when you’ll be pursuing your careers in consultancy firms…

An uncanny gift to drop bricks?

The organisers of the celebrations of the fall of Berlin Wall probably have not made allowances for the elements of chaos brought in by the former Polish president.

Lech Wałęsa, one of the most distinguished figures associated with the resistance against communism, as an icon of the Polish movement had the honour to push the first block of domino symbolising the wall which carved up the city. He pushed the block briskly and stepped back, knocking down a cameraman, but it could have happened to anyone…

Later on, in his speech he used a word “dyrdymały” to describe the content of the speeches of his predecessors, who insufficiently underlined Poland’s contribution in the downfall of the iron curtain. For everyone who knows the leader of strikes in Gdańsk shipyard it should not have come as a surprise.

In line with the diplomatic protocol each of the politicians spoke in their mother tongue. Some, like French and Russian presidents addressed the Germans in a few words in the hosts’ language. Our president, in spite of his long experience in politics, still has not mastered the difficult art of expressing himself. He should, however, realise his words are straight away interpreted into other languages. As I heard about dyrdymały, I immediately thought about the way of translating the phrase into English. I quickly came up with “talk rubbish”, which was later confirmed by my new Oxford PWN dictionary. The problem is that “talk rubbish” is not an example of official language, so the interpreter was put on the spot by the speaker. As the German interpreter rightly said “in such situation there is no time for thinking”. It seemed that the German who interpreted Wałęsa’s word into his native language knew the colloquial Polish word and as he claimed, had managed to get out of the slightly embarrassing situation and interpreted dyrdymały as “travialties”.

The missteps of our “silver-tongued” president are a good example of a challenge for the interpreters and translators. The former ones are in an unenviable position – I would not like to be in their shoes when Wałęsa speaks. The latter are also given a headache by the former president – as those who translate are not native Poles, they have to consult Poles to figure out what Wałęsa meant. But we can also get lost in the maze of the bizarre metaphors used by the man who had his part in tearing down the Berlin Wall…

It takes passion and patience...

I’ve just found out today some of this blog’s readers might have some reasons to celebrate. 30 September is the International Translation Day (translated into Polish as Dzień Tłumacza…). My best wishes to everyone who translate or interpret for a living and to the ones who just dabble in it doing the job occasionally. I hope you will all take pleasure in what you do and you’ll be going the extra mile to get the job right.

Surprisingly neither landline phone nor the neostrada have been cut off, so I’m enjoying the last moments of holidays staring at the computer screen. Tomorrow Bartek will be turning over a new leaf – Master’s studies. God knows why at such small hour – first class starts at 8:00 a.m. what means I’ll have to get up before six…

Where I used to live...

Strolling back home from the centre of Piaseczno I took a bit longer route and ventured to pop in to a place where I had spent roughly speaking over seventeen years of my life. I wandered through the typical estate of blocks of flats, constructed in a panel building technology (wielka płyta), similar to hundreds of such clusters of blocks in Poland, saw a few familiar faces, had a chat with my former geography teacher and neighbour and snapped a few pictures, not only for the blog, but for myself. Maybe I will never live in one place for such long time (it’s most likely when I retire), so I thought it would be expedient to capture the place and save the photos as the memoirs of the days which belong now to the past..

Below – a school I had attended for ten years (1993 – 2003) – I had spent there one year in pre-school class (zerówka), six years in primary school (szkoła podstawowa) and then three years in middle school (gimnazjum) – ten years of mostly joyful and carefree days I’ll be bringing back when I grow older.


The school complex was opened in 1988, just two months after I had been born, to meet the needs of new residents of Piaseczno, who had moved in to those newly built blocks. The school has been revamped, now there’s a decent pitch next to it, pupils can use facilities like gym and swimming pool, where sport classes are held. Currently it’s only a middle school, what means teenagers in their “worst” (as teachers call it) age are clustered together in one place – try to imagine eight hundred rowdy girls and boys… The school even has a draft of its English website (refrain from arduous proofreading, please…, mgr E.D. was my English teacher during first year in middle school, she was quite likeable and did her stint really well on the elementary level).

Below – the building where I lived – view to the balconies and entrance to the staircase. The block was insulated and plastered in 2000. Since then the yellow facade has been covered with mouldy-musty green stains of water leaking down the wall from the improperly laid gullets. My family lived on the first floor to the left, the nearest neighbours were rather unenviable.



The man who occupied the flat below mine would beat up his wife every Saturday after coming home under the influence, the next day they would go to the church together like if nothing had happened.
In the family living next door the husband would hit wife occasionally but once he made up his mind, he was determined to do it right. In the mid nineties they moved out to Nowa Iwiczna (my parents strictly stick to the rule “keep at least 200 metres away from the street Mr and Mrs W. live) and the flat was taken over by parents of one of the spouses. They were really affable, but had one irritating habit – they would look for interesting stuff in the rubbish bins and amass them on the balcony. The administration had to crack down on ants and other worms which hatched there. After they departed the flat was sold to a young couple who still live there, now with their children. As far as I know they still believe in an old Polish saying “Jak Bóg dał dzieci, to da i na dzieci” (If God gives children, He will also give [the money to provide] for children).
In the best times of the flat above us there were eight people packed on sixty square meters (Mrs and Mr P., their two sons with wives and children). Now the flat is occupied only by Mrs P., many of former dwellers of the flat enjoy the accommodation in the lodgings of afterlife, in the leisure time they probably swim in a tar.
For a few years my neighbour from the last floor was the current star of “Jaka To Melodia”. Now of course he doesn’t live in such dingy place. BTW – if you’ve never heard of him don’t worry, good for you! His English website is much better than the one of my school, but it could also take some beating…

And below – an alley in front of the building. From the early childhood I remember there was nothing apart from the flat and arid soil. Now there’s a row of trees, the estate is in the greenery, but the overwhelming squalor takes over. Grass has been rooted out by weeds, pavement slabs are so crooked that one could easily trip over them, the area gets more and more dilapidated.


I’m immensely happy I don’t have to live there. I got used to living in a house with a small garden, so I would find it hard in the spring to sit for the whole day between concrete walls. If I decide to move out, I’ll move to Warsaw and buy a flat there (detached or terraced house for years will be out of reach), at least I’ll replace the advantage of fresh air and greenery with another one – of having everything much nearer. There’s also another reason – Piaseczno, although said to be so modern is still very provincial – people know a lot about their neighbours, news and gossips spread quickly, the whole town can speak about one sensational event (accident, fire, etc.) for a week. There’s a sense of community which I cannot experience in the village I’m living now, but on the other hand I have much more anonymity and one good neighbour, amiable and not nosy…

I think I detest Polish...

If you want to argue it’s a blasphemy or I shouldn’t speak like that about my mother tongue it’s your right. It took me quite long to get to such conclusion and what happened today was only the proverbial last straw – my friend asked my to translate quickly (and possible correctly) an excerpt of the report on the biomass in the UK. I glimpsed at the six pages long document, noticed there were no words I wouldn’t understand and tempted by the promise of generous pay I took up the offer.

Just after I set out to dealing with the text I realised or rather recalled one of the basic truths of linguistics: comprehension doesn’t have to translate into ability to translate. The main reason behind this very case is the structure of the language. English has a strict syntax, tends to be plain, uses few words to convey a certain message. In Polish, in turn, use of syntax is at user’s discretion (although putting the words together in the correct and comprehensible order requires some effort), but the worse feature is that my native language is too descriptive – it uses more words than English. To give you the idea of what the problem consists in, I’ll provide you with an example: “low-carbon economy” – could you fit the whole meaning of the term into two Polish words?

The second reason of my disinclination towards Polish is the ongoing distortion of the language, mangled by its native speaker (including those educated ones, like journalists – dreadful!). Sentences are built in such way that it’s hard to catch on what the author intended to say, many words are misused or overused. My mother, a graduate of Polish philology tells me it’s caused by a “linguistic paucity” (ubóstwo językowe) – people know too few words, so they face difficulties with expressing their feelings or giving information. That’s only one side of the coin, still probably the brighter one – in every nation there are scores of people who find it hard to express themselves, by dint of insufficient education. The darker side is misuse or excessive use of some words (may realizować serve as the best example – I hear it a few times a day and every time it pisses me off. As the Polish wiktionary informs, Pinolona was right to claim it’s derived from French and… what’s the most important the definition sets out the contexts it should be used in. They cover broadly the same situations as in English “realise” (1. put into practise, 2. turn into cash, 3. realise one’s plans, ambitions, dreams, 4. become a reality). So why do Poles have to use in hundreds of different contexts – realizować inwestycję (what means to build a house or a road, possibly also carry out another project, like construction of a sewage treatment plant or a windmill, don’t you be taken aback when you see pompous phrases like realizować drogę), realizować świadczenia (I felt like hitting my head against the wall – it means to pay (out) benefits), realizować zyski (to take profits), realizować usługi (to provide or render services), realizować zlecenie (to fulfil or execute an order), realizować płatności (to make payments), realizować materiał (to go over the curriculum).

Improperly used words often confuse translators – the task for a translator is much easier if the text in the source language is written in a plain way – then the work runs smoothly. Whenever they come across an improperly formulated phrase or sentence this perfect mechanism jams. A translator has to figure out the author’s intention, sometimes it’s imperative to change something in the structure of the text. As in the example of realizować – each case of misused Polish word has to be dealt with separately – in some cases realizować can be translated with another English verb, in others you just need to convert a sentence, just like in the receipt I got today by e-mail, after purchasing a top-up for my mobile phone. Doładowanie telefonu zostało zrealizowane will be translated as “your mobile phone has been topped up”. Simple, isn’t it?

After a longer, holiday break, my translation and linguistic fixation has been awakened. More freakish posts with questions I’m pondering upon will appear soon…

Primary colours...

In the run-up to the elections to the European Parliament I pause for a while to turn back, gaze into the past, dwell upon the present and try to foresee the future.

PAST
Ode to Joy – the final part of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the lyrics written by Frederick Schiller, in 1971 adopted as the anthem of the European Union. My reference to it is partly a belated marking of the fifth anniversary of Poland’s accession to the European Union, partly a short exploration of a translation case study. The whole poem, here in German and English, consists of 108 lines, I’ll confine it to eight first, the most known ones.

Original in German
Freude, schöner Götterfunken,
Tochter aus Elysium!
Wir betreten feuertrunken,
Himmlische, Dein Heiligtum.
Deine Zauber binden wieder,
Was die Mode streng geteilt,
Alle Menschen werden Brüder,
Wo Dein sanfter Flügel weilt.

English translation 1
Joy, beautiful sparkle of the gods,
Daughter of Elysium!
We enter, fire-drunk,
Heavenly one, your shrine.
Your magic again binds
What custom has firmly parted.
All men become brothers
Where your tender wing lingers.

English translation 2
Joyful spark of hope and glory
Unity with the divine
Drunken under fire, goddess
We approach thy holy Shrine
Thy magic shall unite, ever,
Those nations that which were not
Every mortal becomes one
and your rule shall not be forgot

Both renditions above were found on wikipedia. Both might give a significant contribution to the attempts of answering the question of the gist of translation. The first one is a rather strict, but non-poetic, the second departs a bit from the original, but the author broke rhymes and more or less retained the original message. However, the first four lines are to my mind incomparably better than the last four – had the inspiration forsaken the translator? I’m probably the last person who’d take up translating poetry, but maybe as the examinations are over I’ll break my back over it…
The Polish version, by Konstanty Ildefons Gałczyński, as for me outshines the English one.

Polish translation
O Radości, iskro bogów,
Kwiecie elizejskich pól
Swięta, na twym świętym progu
Staje nasz natchniony chór
Jasność twoja wszystko zaćmi
Złączy, co rozdzielił los.
Wszyscy ludzie będą braćmi
Tam, gdzie twój przemówi głos.

PRESENT
After a series of heated discussions I made up my mind on whom should I vote for. I’ll back somebody who has already spent some time in Brussels, knows the onions and won’t bring shame on Poland. For the hesitant ones I suggest looking in on the website Kandydaci 2009 which includes the information about some of the runners, based on the questionnaires they had filled in. Believe them or not, the site however may be the evidence in case they fail to keep their promises…
And another topical oddity – a new spot of Law and Justice – “Show the government a yellow card” (original title: “Daj rządowi żółtą kartkę”) – a quintessence of populism, along with the catchword “ciemny lud to kupi” (meaning more or less “dumb people will fall for it”). Our government is indeed not flawless, but put a blame for the
a) roadworks (during Lech Kaczyński’s mayor term Warsaw wasn’t clogged up, cause streets weren’t dug up and under repair – nothing happened),
b) inflation (the rising prices are the typical effect of the last phase of boom, if the economy is not cooled down early enough by raising interest rates),
c) and problem many Poles face – difficulties with paying off the (mortgage) loans (banks are independent institutions, they are only subject to the Supervisory Body, the construction boom began during Law and Justice parliamentary term, deputy Kurski would probably complacently put it down to the economic policy of Law and Justice, LaD would probably be proud of their accomplishments, heedless of ramifications, i.e. too many loans denominated in foreign currencies which in long term might be a time bomb!)
is a misconstruction.

FUTURE
…of the European Communities seems to be up in the air… They were devised after WW2 to unite Europe and most of all to prevent the reprise of war carnage. At least the part of Europe lying west from the iron curtain was meant to evolve into more or less uniform entity… Time has borne out some of the pre-assumptions, some were brought down by the cruel reality along the way. Poland draws benefits from the membership in the EU, but it doesn’t mean we should forget about all the downsides of that mighty, bureaucratic structure. I’m not thinking now about our shipyards, but I recall the absurdities of such as curvy cucumbers, crooked carrots, numerous limits, standards (they’re partly legitimate). Further on I see the bigger fault, one English commentator described it “Drifting apart”. Indeed EU with its structures drift apart from its citizens. EU with its sprawling bureaucracy has become a bundle of organisations which appear to be created chiefly for themselves, just for fun of the thousands of officials holding onto their stools there there. Piles of paper, tones of documents – decrees, directives, circulars, bills – for whom – in my eyes more and more just for itself? If the process is not ceased, the costs of keeping the whole machine running might exceed the advantages and who’ll be then to switch it off and what are going to do then? The first warning signs were given by the French and the Dutch who rejected the European constitution in June 2005, later on (in June 2008) by citizens of Ireland who rebuffed the Lisbon Treaty in a referendum. They gave voice and expressed their anxiety about the shape of things going on, the growing, maybe even yawning gap between EU officials and common people – in fact EU authorities have lost their common touch (had they ever have it?) and started playing at important men in tailor-made suits…

Maybe I gripe about all those minor in fact absurdities - I’m far cry from euroscepticism – I’m trying to analyse the flip side of the coin…