English to Romanian translation - Why your English becomes weaker over time.

There are times when you need an English to Romanian translation of things. My wife complains I don't use all the words other people use. This is because overtime your stock of words declines, purely because you are not exposed yourself to them. In addition, without consciously thinking about it, you simplify your words purely so that you are better understood.

I do often find myself being given instructions for objects, such an ingenious folding baby bed, and needing to provide an English to Romanian translation so the rest of the family can actually use it!

A more annoying part of reading a Romanian translation of Western goods is seeing how they describe ingredients in different languages. A super sweet baby biscuit become, purely from apparently crossing the Romanian border, a sugar free biscuit, as they didn't mention sugar in Romanian anywhere on the packaging. This is especially annoying to us, as we are trying to provide him, at least for a short while, a sugar-free life style.

Then comes the tricky part of translating jokes and proverbs into Romanian. They say that when you can do this proficiently, you are well on the way to using the language correctly. I think my favourite Romanian phrase is describing a man made of mammaliga (boiled, ground maize - a Romanian staple food) in the rain. I occasionally throw in English proverbs, but they take rather a while to explain and then I always have a nagging doubt that I have said them or explained them correctly.

Everything in our school has an English to Romanian translation and an English to Turkish translation. While I host my parent evenings, people sit in and get a Romanian translation of everything I say. So it is odd that when the parents get the final end of year report, it is only ever in English. To make matters worse it is a very educationally technical language - even normal teachers wander away looking confused about some of the targets - the parents have no chance.

However there was an interesting experiment. Three reports re issued and the parents were questioned afterwards, in the first, no grades were given only comments for improvement. The second only got a list of grades. The third got a full report, combining both the reports from the other two. Guess which group got the most from their reports? I think it will surprise you. Those that just got grades were happy enough, those that got just comments read them and put them into action. Those that had both' completely ignored the teacher comments and just focused on the grades for achievement and effort. This is why I suggested translating all the reports using Google translate - which turns everything into tourist-speak, i.e. a mix of local lingo and English words popped in if the computer can't find a replacement, but it still is a much better alternative to giving English school reports to people who have no understanding of the language - why these folks send their children to learn and read stuff they can't help with was always a mystery to me but there you go!

What are you funniest English to Romanian translations?

My English to Romanian translation efforts

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