Agony of Advertising: Part 2

Irony of ironies - a copywriting course came in the mail today.

In my first post, I make my view abundantly clear that translation is a subset of writing. Sure, translation bridges languages and cultures, but the finished product is still black-on-white verbiage. And if you do it right, no one will know it’s a translation.

If you're an ivory-tower type, you can probably reel off a list of exceptions to my hard-and-fast rule. I’m the first to agree that word-for-word translations of the Yanomami language are anthropologically useful. But they don’t pay my bills.

What pays my bills is my ability to write (no catcalls, please!). This is a point novice translators miss. They figure that if it sounds authentic, then no one can quibble with it. Problem is, authentic English is often crap. You need to write excellent English. Hence my desire to polish my writing skills.

I picked this particular course because it offers ten graded assignments. So I’m forced to write ten texts, and someone has to critique them? Beautiful. Mainly because then I have no excuse for not writing.