Mar 9, 2018 16:00
6 yrs ago
English term
Happy Independent\'s Year
English
Other
General / Conversation / Greetings / Letters
I actually would like to discuss the choice for "Happy Independent's Year" (not my own translation).
Would you, as a native, prefer Independents, Independent's or Independents'? I personally would have never chosen Independent's. And is it correct to use Independent here while we're talking about self-employed people? Not sure if those words fully overlap...
Source:
https://www.socialsecurity.be/citizen/nl/nieuws/happy-indepe...
Would you, as a native, prefer Independents, Independent's or Independents'? I personally would have never chosen Independent's. And is it correct to use Independent here while we're talking about self-employed people? Not sure if those words fully overlap...
Source:
https://www.socialsecurity.be/citizen/nl/nieuws/happy-indepe...
Responses
4 +5 | No, it's wrong. | philgoddard |
Change log
Mar 9, 2018 16:26: philgoddard changed "Language pair" from "Dutch to English" to "English"
Mar 9, 2018 16:29: philgoddard changed "Language pair" from "English" to "Dutch to English"
Mar 9, 2018 17:06: writeaway changed "Language pair" from "Dutch to English" to "English"
Responses
+5
24 mins
Selected
No, it's wrong.
Zelfstandig means self-employed or freelance or (as Barend suggested) entrepreneur, but "independent" is wrong. The entire campaign, and even the name of a website, happyindependentsyear.be, is built around a mistranslation.
I know most Dutch to English is done by non-native speakers, but sometimes we do it better :-)
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Note added at 40 mins (2018-03-09 16:40:31 GMT)
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While it's a mistake, it may not seem that way for Belgians. See my comments in the discussion box.
I know most Dutch to English is done by non-native speakers, but sometimes we do it better :-)
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Note added at 40 mins (2018-03-09 16:40:31 GMT)
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While it's a mistake, it may not seem that way for Belgians. See my comments in the discussion box.
Peer comment(s):
agree |
Charles Davis
: It's a complete non-starter. "Happy X Year" doesn't work even if you change "independent" to a correct translation of "zelfstandig". Something like "50 years of protection for the self-employed", maybe, though that's not very snappy.
12 mins
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Yes, that's a good point. You can have a happy day, maybe even a week, but a year?
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neutral |
writeaway
: not so much freelancer. It just means self-employed. the fact that 'independent' was mentioned speaks legions /ok. but keep in mind this is a Belgian text, not Dutch. And yes, there are some real differences. /and there's no 'era' involved, fwiw
45 mins
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I said self employed.
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neutral |
AllegroTrans
: Having lived on the "edge" of Belgium and having worked with Belgians, I don't think this play on words (Independence v Independents) is at all bad, and in fact quite Belgian, albeit it doesn't work for UK
2 hrs
|
agree |
Barend van Zadelhoff
: Basically it's what is called a 'false friend'; I suppose 'independents' has a political connotation in the US... and many things Bernie says are spot-on. :-) // Without context you can't figure out what it refers to. First association: political.
3 hrs
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Thanks. You're the only Dutch native to have commented on my answer. Does the slogan sound odd to you?
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agree |
Björn Vrooman
: My French's rusty and I can understand Dutch a bit, but that's it. So I'd appreciate some native speaker input. My point is that this phrase probably sounds odd in the source language(s) too. Why would someone believe it'll sound better in English?
4 hrs
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Thanks! I'd appreciate some native input too.
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agree |
katerina turevich
: Not much to add here: everything has already been said. I agree, it’s a complete misnomer. Were it up to me, I would go for the formula offered by Björn : “Celebrating the era of self-employed people ” :))
6 hrs
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agree |
acetran
5 days
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4 KudoZ points awarded for this answer.
Comment: "Thanks a lot everyone for your interesting contributions :-)"
Discussion
There was this helpful publication:
https://www.eca.europa.eu/Other publications/EN_TERMINOLOGY_...
I think the emergence of some kind of Eurish would not be the sort of development learners of English were hoping for. It would only add to the confusion that already exists. Recently, I had to visit one of these EU research pages to try and figure out what a certain grant is used for. The English text on that page was hardly comprehensible; the German translation, based on the EN version, was of abysmal quality.
I think this happens in Italy too, doesn't it? We've had people in EN-DE ask about the meaning of some paragraph which had been translated from Italian into English and the translation was just wrong. So I had to resort to GT and my knowledge of Latin to figure this out.
Best wishes and have a great week!
The apostrophe would have been my doom, anyway. What Charles said...
"just as you would put 'Happy Women's Day', not 'Happy Woman's Day' or 'Happy Women Day'"
...is equally true for German. It's "Muttertag," but [Edit] there shouldn't be a "Tag der Frau"--it sounds funny, at least to me. You say "Frauentag" and "Männertag" (plural). And you don't say "Frauenjahr" or something, that would sound more than just a little bit odd. As said before, that'd be like you could ignore all women next year (not that I'm advocating for this).
Best
PS
Before someone objects, "Frauenjahr" does exist in German, but it has a completely different meaning:
http://www.enzyklo.de/Begriff/Frauenjahr
I really wouldn't recommend it.
This article gives more background bout the campaign in English: http://www.brusselstimes.com/belgium/10410/celebration-of-50...
"The Year of the Self-Employed" could be said, but you can't use this def. article + adjective structure with a possessive.
While "Independent's Year" seems unidiomatic to me, I wouldn't rule out "Independents Year", without an apostrophe, though I think the apostrophe should be there. English is very fond of using nouns as pre-posed adjectives, though usually singular nouns. "Patients association", with no apostrophe, is common. I use "patients' association".
I was waiting for someone to reply to this second part of the question. The three ENS examples I linked did not use an apostrophe after "Independents," but I think this was done so that the word closely resembles "Independence," whether or not it's grammatically correct.
Bernard had put the apostrophe in the same spot in his first discussion box entry, BTW, and I would agree with both of you. Tell me if I'm mistaken, but I think you say Mother's Day because you typically have only one mum. And I know that you can use the definite article + adjective to describe a group, e.g., the old, the young--or, as Allegro did--the self-employed. But "the independent" as a group sounds a bit too general and is less clear.
@Barend
I am not particularly fond of free agents because of its "original" meaning:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/free agents
If most of you don't like "Celebrating 50 Years of XX," though I can show you a multitude of examples on UK pages, there's another option (in AmE). You could say "Happy Anniversary"+the name of the act/law. E.g.:
https://blog.epa.gov/blog/2012/04/happy-anniversary-clean-wa...
I can't find this on UK pages, though.
Best
Not sure whether it will last for a year, though.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/03/09/sleepy-salisbury...
You're from the UK.
So perhaps you are more suspicious of :-) 'free agents' than your US counterparts?
In business, a free agent refers to someone who works independently for oneself, rather than for a single employer. These include self-employed workers, freelancers, independent contractors and temporary workers, who altogether represent about 44 percent of the U.S. labor force. The term free agent is believed to have been coined by Daniel H. Pink, author of a 1997 cover story in Fast Company titled “Free Agent Nation.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_agent_(business)
Perhaps it's better To Look to the East:
Happy Year of the Free Agents.
Here, we seem to be faced with the opposite. It's some attempt at a wordplay, but it just doesn't seem OK to me. I wouldn't know how to translate this into German. It's "Alles Gute zum Muttertag" = "Happy Mother's Day"; "Alles Gute zum Geburtstag" = "Happy Birthday"; but "Alles Gute zum Selbstständigenjahr/Jahr der Selbstständigen"?!? Sounds like you get one year, then you're doomed.
What you could say is "Alles Gute zum 50-jährigen Bestehen..."--basically, like Happy Anniversary messages. It does say "50 jaar sociaal statuut" next to the phrase in Dutch and "50 ans du statut social" in French, which is quite similar to the German "50 Jahre..."
I believe there would be no issue here if something had actually been translated.
What we have here, though, is some kind of hodgepodge that may sound like something, but doesn't mean anything.
Best
And that, to me, illustrates one of the fallacies of "Euro-English". I don't think there's any such thing; speakers of different European languages mangle English in different ways.
Even I can't gain access to it anymore! Doesn't matter, really. Your link is just as good.
BTW, there is precedence for this kind of usage:
https://www.beervanablog.com/beervana/2017/7/4/happy-indepen...
http://www.thecoopcowork.com/de/blog/read/417599182/happy-in...
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/happy-independents-day-jeff-m...
Though that's "day." I agree that "Year" sounds a bit odd. Come to think of it, it would sound just as odd in German. I wonder whether that's the real issue.
Best
“In the act of recognising the validity of Euro-English,” Dr Modiano wrote, “one liberates continental European [second language] users of English from the tyranny of standard language ideology.”
"Standard language ideology", forsooth!
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/brexit-latest-news...
https://www.ft.com/content/b5afd93a-0d94-11e8-8eb7-42f857ea9...
BTW, Phil, I think EN-EN would have been fine. Most people there know a bit of French at least.
Side note: I would have expected something like Year of the Freelancer:
https://www.smartcompany.com.au/people-human-resources/recru...
In any case, this just seems like a translation pulled from a website such as LEO & Co.
Enjoy your weekend!
I'd be interested to know what native speakers of Dutch (and French, because "indépendant" means the same thing) think of this. Will the average Belgian know or care that "independent" is, strictly speaking, a mistake? Or does it work because this is not really English, but a hybrid of the three languages?
And are you actually translating this, KelseyR, or just curious? If it's the former, it might need a translator's note.