Topping the EF English Proficiency Index for the fifth consecutive year is the Netherlands, ahead even of Singapore, where constitutionally-enshrined English acts a lingua franca and the de facto main language. An impressive feat, and a testament the country’s outstanding education system, as well as the population’s outward-looking pragmatism and its embracing vast quantities of – overwhelmingly US – English-language cultural/media output. It’s also, to a certain extent, due to the fact Dutch and English languages are so closely related historically: Old English and Old Dutch were mutually intelligible. Despite clearly having gone their separate ways over the last millennium, their core vocabularies, phonologies and “rhythm” still broadly correspond, making it seem all the less “foreign”.
In terms translation, however, this represents a doubled-edged sword: with semantic shifts giving rise to false friends, and overconfidence coupled with a lack of awareness of register and style wrongfooting and even disengaging the target audience… This goes by the name of Dunglish (Dutch-influenced English): a term first coined by Joy Burrough in her seminal work: Righting English that’s gone Dutch:
“Dunglish is perfectly understandable to all Dutch speakers, who communicate very effectively with each other in it. But it does puzzle and confuse readers who don’t know Dutch.”
A grave error
Driving the point home
(to be continued)
MORRISON TRANSLATIONS 