As a language professional, I often find it difficult to separate my work from my private life. As a dedicated interpreter and translator who is constantly striving to perfect his own use of language, and who is often called upon to correct his colleagues’ translations (we all make mistakes, after all), I have difficulty not doing this in my private life.
I know that it’s usually better to bite my tongue when someone makes a linguistic mistake which I could correct with just a few words. But sometimes I come across situations where the mistakes other people make clearly lead to confusion. After all, a difference of only one or two letters, one poorly chosen word, or even a single comma or apostrophy too much or too little, can make a huge difference in meaning. And, helpful little person that I am, I like to try to help.
Trouble is that not everyone appreciates that help. Sometimes it’s not even recognised as such. It’s regarded as criticism. Or worse. I have been accused of being pedantic.
And it made me wonder. Is giving of my professional knowledge to help out in a confusing situation so sensitive since it’s all about language, and we all use language? Whereas this is not the case with many other professional fields, and we more readily accept other people’s input in those fields?
It reminded me of an incident from some time ago. A lady at the front of a line at a counter in a chemist’s was enquiring about cough sirups. She was about to choose one that the sales person recommended, when someone behind her recommended a different one. He added that he was a doctor (in other words, he knew what he was talking about). Both the sales person behind the counter and the customer were happy with the professional’s input and the lady heeded his advice.
It’s probably not a perfect comparison, but I wonder if it’s easier to more readily accept a doctor’s input because his is not a field that we feel we are too familiar with, whereas we have all used language all our lives and treat input in that field as criticism and take it personally.
To be honest, I’m not really sure what it is, but it’s becoming increasingly clear to me that not only should I bite my tongue in these situations, but when on the Internet I should also restrain my fingers and keep them from typing when I see confusing linguistic errors. Apparently people would rather make those mistakes uncorrected. Well, I’ll try to let them. Hopefully that’ll be seen to be more helpful.
