‘What did you said?’

The outside world is often dismissive of Saipan’s pipsqueak status, but it actually serves as a tight focal point for some factors in international commerce. For example, you can easily hear six or seven languages spoken through the course of an average day. As a backdrop to this scene, the business sector, including, of course, tourism, has a lot of written materials flowing across languages.

Just about anyone who is above ground and drawing air will eventually get roped into some stage of a small-scale translation project. Could be you. Could be me. Could be that guy under a tree who is smoking a cigarette.

These things usually go in two steps. The actual translation is usually performed by a native speaker of the original language, someone (in fact, anyone) around the office who has some sort of familiarity with the target language. After this step, a native speaker of the target language is used to tweak the style and grammar. If you happen to be within eyeshot when they’re looking around for that native speaker, you’re about to get drafted.

I’ve managed to avoid several of these missions lately, but I feigned being helpful by offering a few observations. I’ll arm you with these in case you can use them to your advantage.

But first, I’ll note that my context is the basic grunt work of standard business communications. Something like advertising copy, by contrast, is far more demanding.

Now that we’ve taken care of that little matter, we can proceed. One issue that has come up a few times recently is the distinction between British English and American English. Does it matter which flavor is used? No, I can’t see that it matters either way, but the ideal approach, for any given document, is to remain consistent instead of using a haphazard mix of the two flavors. But even if things are mixed up it’s not that big of a deal.

The true gotcha’ on this stuff is often units of measurement. They can hew to different conventions.

For example, if a foreign source tells a chemist in middle America that the temperature in Taipei is 28 degrees, the chemist will probably know to pack warm-weather duds for an upcoming trip. But if you tell the average tourist in middle America that same number, you might see somebody arriving in a jacket and mittens.

Meanwhile, as for general grammar, my notion is that function trumps form. At the level of international commerce, most people, most of the time, just need to get the point across at some basically acceptable level. This is second nature in Saipan, where budgets are usually very tight and there’s not much money for spinning gilded words.

If I had to cough up a grammar checklist, I’d keep it as short as possible by noting just four pitfalls. All four are common words that look nearly alike, but that aren’t really interchangeable. They are:

1) “it’s” vs. “its”

2) “you’re” vs. “your”

3) “to” vs. “too”

4) “their” vs. “there” vs. “they’re”

Of course, English has a long list of confusingly similar words (here, hear; waist, waste; discrete, discreet; stationary, stationery; compliment, complement; principle, principal; desert, dessert; etc.), so there are plenty of details to heed if you want to.

One thing that drives people bonkers about English is the wacky grammar pertaining to verbs. Fortunately, even if a verb strays far from the confines of textbook grammar, the meaning will usually survive unscathed. I’d say half the correspondence I get has messed-up verbs. Charmingly enough, the misuse is usually a more logical construction than the “correct” use would be. For all their superficial complexity, English verbs are actually tough and hardy players. If you can just manage to push them out the door, even in rough form, they’ll be able to fend for themselves in the wild.

A foreign office clerk one asked me, “What did you said?” This construction struck me as elegant and logical. I decided to swipe it for my own use. It has since propagated through my social circles. Some day it will come full circle and I’ll encounter it in the wild again.

Anyway, stepping back to the broad view of things, I’ll play the optimist and note that even “imperfect” language can be a side effect of dynamicism. This is the nature of international crossroads, where language is an expedient for cooperation and for getting things done.