Articles

Formal or informal?

When you are invited to a wedding, a gig, a first dinner date, etc., we will think about and choose the most appropriate outfit for the event. When we go to a job interview, talk to our company director, go out with our friends or speak with our in-laws for the first time, we will use different words or expressions which are right for the situation. In short, our lives are divided into formal, informal and mixed occasion.

It is easy to control these differences in your culture and in your mother tongue, however this can be more difficult away from home. For instance, in my case. I'm a Spanish girl living in London. I had an advanced level of English in Spain, but I realised that my English in England is just enough to get by. When I arrived here I tried to understand the different accents, not to mention people who speak very quickly. I also had to make an effort to converse using different sentences (subject, verb, object), although after a few months my "advanced" English was all muddled up. You found yourself sending e-mails to colleagues saying: "I am very pleased to announce that the Project to go to drink some pints at the pub is approved." Or ending e-mails to my director with e-mails like this: "see you later alligator, cheers, XXX".

In the work environment, mainly when dealing with client-company relations, the company tries to project a professional and efficient image of itself to obtain the maximum customer satisfaction and to avoid misunderstandings. For these reasons, my colleagues, who are professionals in the translation field, supervise all the documents that I need to send to the clients. Throughout their professional lives, they have dedicated their studies and their careers to the differences between languages and their nuances. This dedication is exactly what is required to make a good translator.


Article written by a Spanish intern working in the Marketing Department as part of the Leonardo Programme.


Articles posted on this section of our website are written by staff members or interns. Topics may include their experiences of living and working in London, their thoughts on language and culture and the differences therein.


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