The Bangkok Post – Mangling English
Last Saturday, Dolly Koghar wrote a letter to Post Bag complaining about the standard of English in My Life on January 8th. She mentioned the article “The 11 Pitfalls of Health” by Dr. Banchob.
I had not even bothered to finish reading the article. My reasoning was simple. Most medical and other research papers are either written in English or translated into English for publication.
Germany and Japan are just two countries known for devoting significant resources to ensuring scientific research published in English is translated into their native languages. Thailand is not known for that.
Obviously you do not even need to read English in order to graduate as a doctor. Texts for the study of medicine as a subject are available in many other languages. But research findings on health issues are a different matter, and if one is to offer good advice on health, keeping abreast with all the latest research is essential. Just look at how our understanding of cholesterol has changed in the last 10 years.
So, by my reckoning, if Dr. Banchob’s competency in the English language is so poor, he probably has difficulty reading and absorbing research published in English. That being the case, I have better things to do with my time than read his articles.
But on the subject of English and the Bangkok Post, if you look at the equally dreadful language every day in the Weather section, ‘Weather Today’, it is obvious that copy is not checked by a native English speaker. Actually, forget the native speaker, I know many Thais who could write better English than that.
With the recent price increase of the Bangkok Post, would it be asking too much for some of the revenue to be spent on improving the standard of English in the paper?
This post has 2 comments
January 14th, 2009
The cimple anser is to cancel the Bankok post wen your supscritsun is over…..
Sorry, could not resist. Both the Post and the Nation offer an appalling level of English competency for the prices they charge (home delivery of the Bangkok Post is the same that I paid for home delivery of the Wall Street Journal only 5 years ago in the US).
Both subscribers and advertisers need to vote with their checkbooks. The sad irony is the that the Central Group, who owns controlling interest in the Bangkok Post, probably does not care.
TIT…. Study Thai and read the local papers. Don’t read the news as it is mostly bad these days (good for sales people, as the newspaper is a major demotivator at this point in time), or go online and access world class papers (IMHO, The New York Times, The Straits Times, The Times of London, The Independent, The Gaurdian, Le Monde, etc.).
Cheers
January 15th, 2009
The only thing I haven’t figured out yet is how to get a coffee, stretch out on the sofa and read my computer.
Other than that, yes, I do read a lot of stuff online.
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