Menace to the Polish Language
One of the side effects of liberating the Eastern European markets since the collapse
of totalitarianism in 1989, is the corruption of the Polish language by the huge
influx of mainly English lexicon and syntax. To some extent this is due to the impact
of Western, American-led culture and technologies, which spread around the globe,
influencing many languages. However, it is not only the terminology connected with
the new technologies that makes inroads into Polish, but also common words that
do have their Polish equivalents. Propagated by the media they quickly take root,
with occasional distortions by Polish grammar. And so weekend, hot dogs, snack bar,
sex shop, biznes (business), show, etc. came into use despite being often hard for
the natives to enunciate. You get bombarded by neologisms every step of the way
- while reading papers, watching TV, listening to the radio or just walking in town.
Subjected to Polish grammar rules (declension, conjugation, etc.) those terms turn
into hybrids (English stems with Polish suffixes) and combined with English syntax
form "Polglish", a language often unintelligible to the Polish speakers with no
knowledge of English.
Frequently those neologisms just don't fit into Polish smoothly. This is the case
with the prefix "post" for instance, introduced from English and commonly used in
the expression "post-communist" (post komunistyczny). Now, those two words combined
mean - "a communist day of fasting" in Polish, the word "post" being a noun. Non-English
speakers would be puzzled by this hybrid: "Have the communists converted to the
catholic faith and have set up a day of penitence for the sins they committed?"
Another striking feature is the form of address, which in English can be direct,
but in Polish has to be via the 3rd person singular or the 1st person plural. A
good deal of translated material flouts this rule making the style clumsy and improper.
This clumsy, corrupted language is used amongst Polish communities in the English-speaking
world, where they simply forget their native tongue. It is astonishing, however,
that it is ever so quickly assimilated in its homeland. How can this phenomenon
be explained? Is this due to snobbery, in a country valuing any western influence
after the post-war communist period of isolation? Or is it due to laziness, incompetence
or greed of translators who take the easy way out by translating literally - into
Polglish? After all word for word is easier done than sense for sense and can even
be handled by machines, not to mention the ease of back-translation, if need be.
Translators apart, the blame for this widespread phenomenon should be assigned to
all influential propagators of the language, e.g. the media (publishers, writers,
journalists, etc.) Their "Polglish" needs transcribing into Polish, so that it can
be intelligible to the public at large, in particular to the non-English speakers.
For centuries Polish absorbed influences of various major languages, but for nearly
half a century of post-war stagnation their impact remained negligible. This contrasts
strikingly with the current impact of English, which started with the onset of market
economy, now well into its second decade. Fuelled by the media, the unprecedented
language corruption spreads like wildfire, entrenching the curious paradox: whereas
in previous centuries there was a strong repression of Polish by the occupying forces,
there was also a strong resistance to it, whereas nowadays nobody seems to care.
This results in a clumsy language, lacking in style and unintelligible to the natives.
I wonder if this should be any less objectionable considering this is a global phenomenon.
After all English spreads around the globe permeating all languages and so various
other hybrids, e.g.: Franglais, Spanglish or Gerlish (?) are created. I wonder though,
if they too, sound as clumsy as Polglish?
By Halina Arendt. Copyright © 2003.
Freelance translator (English <> Polish, French > Polish)
Published by lexicool.com, November 2003. halina.2@tiscali.co.uk