“Errors” - made by the Language Professional

Today’s management trainers keep on suggesting us to concentrate only on present and stop thinking about past anymore – but its human nature to ponder over past actions, analyze the causes and effects of past events and then come to a conclusion. Forget science and technological advancement, even language skill could not be developed if we constantly deleted our past learning! Let’s analyze what we have done while analyzing errors in past.

Slip of tongue as well as typo-error was always considered very serious issue, especially in professional domain, though “making verbal mistakes”, “making mistakes on paper”, “misquoting from memory” are part of our everyday life. The term “Freudian slip” told us long back, that there are always intents hidden in these Fehlleistungen (Symptomatic actions), even if the mistake-maker is always not fully aware of this – so we cannot call “making mistakes” mere accidents. Many times, the speaker is not able to hide the fact, despite of spending lot of effort to cover up during speaking or writing. Hence, if an interpreter explains the phrase “das schwierigste Problem” to the client as “the disastrous problem” instead of “most difficult problem”, the client indeed has a reason to be worried! 

In recent time, cognitive psychologists replaced “Symptomatic actions” by “Slip of tongue”. But determining the reason behind slip of tongue remained difficult as ever. Eminent psychoanalyst Charles Brenner’s extensive clinical research shows the complexity in impact of human cognitive process on our speech. Fatigue, lack of concentration, hatred, anxiety or anger may be the reason behind a writer’s making a series of mistakes in a two-page content. Language processing in a person’s brain has lot of dependence on his life’s experiences. Understanding the nature and reason of mistakes made by a person needs an understanding of his\her personality and environment.

The receiver also has a role in determining how significant the mistake is. Example – while listening to a speaker already known to us or admired by us, we hardly pay attention to the grammatical mistakes in the speech, but concentrate more on the content. Same happens while reading a favourite author- readers rarely have trouble in assuming a misspelt word correctly. Psycholinguist Helen Leuninger tells us, that we make one slip of tongue per thousand words on average – leads to the assumption that in normal course of speaking, we make one mistake in every ten minutes. And the listeners are quite apt in correcting them automatically while processing the received words. We are lucky!

But a language professional, be him\her an interpreter, translator or copywriter, rarely enjoys the luxury of working in\ for a comfort zone – an environment which would not be affected by a slip of tongue or misspelling. Especially when written, blunder can rarely be corrected.

Hence, analyzing situations, who leads to scope of misspelling or slip of tongue becomes inevitable. According to scientific observations, we do not have a chance to avoid mistakes in verbal language usage. In fact, taking special care of mistakes and paying more attention may lead to more frequent mistakes. Translators and copywriters are luckier that writing is mostly not delivering extempore and they have more time to correct. But remember your reviewer – who apparently tried very hard to see your work completely free of errors, actually converting you a paranoid worker making more and more silly mistakes every day? Do not worry much – some seniors point out your mistakes only to threat you but not to help.

How analyzing errors help a language professional then? Analysis shows us that:

It is good to develop a reading habit. This eventually enhances our language skill as well as makes us mostly aware of what we are talking about.

Being too critical about past errors and vowing not to do it again worsens the situation. Simply trying to keep us healthy, having good food, good sleep and being in good mood makes our brain synchronize better and faster.

In general, talking to people as well as following other people talking is good for language professionals as it boosts our understanding of language usage.

When working with written content, review your work before submission, but take a time-gap between writing and reviewing. Reviewing immediately after writing may not help much in making the content better.

Avoiding \ignoring judgmental people in work atmosphere is necessary. As professionals, all of us are aware of own responsibility to improve. Let’s try to understand whether the other person giving valuable opinions about your work is trying to be friendly or just demotivating. In other words, being open to good suggestions helps but not to judgement.

Trying to avoid irritating people and situations is a must for lesser mistakes in language usage.

Continuous improvement is not really an overnight process for a language professional. Let’s not try to change ourselves instantly but be ready to accept changes in life we face. Even linguistic expressions of any particular geographical boundary or of a community change with time. Let’s keep ourselves updated – but not try to reach at the peak of improvement tomorrow morning!

Cheers! Always remember the famous George W. Bush quote: “They misunderestimated me.”  We all love our work. We will never be “free of mistakes” but undoubtedly produce a better piece of work next time.