> Sorry to bring everything back around to Russia -- it being my idee
> fixe -- but this is definitely the case here. According to a recent
> study I read, a whopping 4.8% of the Russian population speaks English
> "fluently" (however the study defined "fluent"). I would rank the true
> number as even lower. Unless you are going to work for a foreign
> company, English literacy is a pretty useless skill in Russia. Young
> people study it at school, but that doesn't mean most of them they can
> do more than string a few words together and repeat phrases they hear
> in pop songs
One would hope that at least some Russians who know no English, and Americans who know no Russian, would want to know something about each other's countries, and would want that knowledge to be as accurate and comprehensive as possible. Obviously, for this to happen, translation has to take place at some point. Good translation, however, is expensive (you can get free translation through Babelfish, etc., but what good is it?). Expensive things need to be bought by people with money. So an awful lot of information transfer over linguistic borders is controlled by people with money. Is this a good thing?
What I'm concerned about, among other things, is the politics and economics of the control of international discourse at the nuts and bolts level -- moving ideas and concepts from one language to another -- which is not so automatic and problem-free as a lot of people think.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ When I was a little boy, I had but a little wit, 'Tis a long time ago, and I have no more yet; Nor ever ever shall, until that I die, For the longer I live the more fool am I. -- Wit and Mirth, an Antidote against Melancholy (1684)