Alan PT

From 30 years of working with international teams in tech, I'm much more forgiving of "mangled English" than I used to be - as long as it's understandable I'm fine with it. I wasn't always like that - I once had an argument with Asda over their signage which incorrectly read "Need one cutting up?"

But I'm absolutely amazed at the quality of spoken and written English from the Portuguese I work with - I throw in vocabulary which would be beyond a lot of people in the UK and it's incredibly rare to catch them out!

I think a moderator might be along in a minute though, to tell us we drifted slightly off-topic

CamemBert

While you’re off topic, allow me to chip in. I do voluntary translations for a PT animal protection charity. I have on occasion proofread work by the other translators, who are Portuguese. Most of it is pretty good, but before my time a lot of publicity material went out that described the charity as a zoophilic organization...

sportpix

Ha ha, then you should see ‘chiglish’. People have put together books on mangled English that has appeared on menus, general signage and even toilet doors. It’s improved lots in recent years but when I moved to HK 30+ years ago it was both terrible and humorous. One of my wife’s running mates is a trained journalist and she used to offer her services to companies to improve their English documents and such but she got very few takers. They just didn’t care. In the year that Ive lived in Portugal I’ve been hugely impressed with my level of English by everyone from taxi drivers to restaurant staff and even the ladies who clean the common areas of my apartment block. Can’t wait to get back 😢