You say tomato...American English vs British English terms that could confuse (or amuse)

Hi! Welcome to the Complete Interpreter podcast by the Interpreting Coach.

Why 'Complete Interpreter'? Because you're not just a translation machine, you're also a person and a business owner, and I hope to help you take a 360 view of yourself and share some great tried-and-tested strategies to improve your interpreting skills, mindset, and marketing.

In this episode, I talk about a few expressions whose different meanings in American English and British English could give rise to confusion.

There is of course no one accent or variant of English that is 'superior' to another. We are all fundamentally 'accent-centric' when we speak our native language, because we tend to think of ourselves as NOT having an accent, while other people do; for instance, if you grow up in France, you tend to think Belgians 'have an accent', whereas they think YOU do! The reality is that there are just DIFFERENT accents or pronunciations, and as an interpreter, what is acceptable will depend on your audience (i.e. what they expect to hear and what they understand).

In general, European audiences and interpreters are used to British English, and this is usually what people have learned at school, but the influence of American English (from TV and film) is widely felt. In fact, I wonder if British English will continue to be the norm in language teaching in Europe, or if American English will take over eventually!

In this episode, I have avoided talking about everyday vocabulary that differs significantly between AmEng and BrEng. I'm sure you've all encountered word lists with examples like pants, rubber, suspenders, trunk, sidewalk, etc. Instead, I've focused on two or three expressions that might come up in a work context.

Now that I think about it, there's one more term that has flummoxed non-British colleagues on more than one occasion, and that's a word for zero: 'nought'. When I've used 'nought', American colleagues have wondered if I was saying 'not'.

Do you have any more examples of terms that could cause confusion?

Let me know what you'd like me to talk about next!
 
Sophie (aka The Interpreting Coach)

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