Recently, I received an e-mail message from a French person (who I will not name) which read "kept silent by good holidays". To be perfectly frank, I couldn't work out what it was supposed to mean.
A few weeks ago, my wife showed me a book called "Chinglish" with tens of examples of this kind of "English". I just hope they didn't put it in an automatic translator, or maybe they just tried to translate literally in their head.
Try translating the French "n'importe quoi" or "c'est normal" literally. I don't think many people would understand.
So, it raises the question, how much should you put yourself in a different mentality before speaking another language ? How much is it important to actually go to another country before just producing whatever language comes to you in your own language and actually translating ? How much is it important to actually use a good professional translator, even though it's costly, before trying to put the horse before the cart and translate an official or marketing document yourself ?
