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The Polish Language and Translations
Some of the neologisms just don't fit into Polish smoothly. To quote an example - the prefix "post" was introduced into Polish and is most commonly used in a word post-communist (post komunistyczny). Now, those two words combined mean - "a communist day of fasting" in Polish. Non-English speakers would be puzzled by this hybrid: "Have the communists converted to the catholic faith and have set up a day of penitence for the sins they committed?" Another striking feature is the form of address, which in English can be direct, but in Polish has to be via 3rd person singular or 1st person plural. The majority of translated material flouts this rule making the style clumsy and improper. The spoken language also becomes corrupted by the media, which seem to make literal translations, paying no heed to correct Polish usage.
This clumsy, corrupted language is used amongst Polish communities in the English-speaking countries, where they forget their native tongue. It is astonishing, however, that it is adopted ever so quickly in Poland. How can this phenomenon be explained? Is this due to snobbery, in a country valuing any western influence after the post-war communist period of isolation? Or is it due to laziness, incompetence or greed of official and unofficial translators and interpreters who take the easy way out by translating it literally - word by word - into Polglish? An accusing finger should be pointed mainly towards the propagators of the language, e.g. translators, writers, publicists, journalists, TV presenters, etc. Their "Polglish" needs transcribing into Polish, so that it can be intelligible to the public at large, in particular to the non-English speakers.
I wonder if the Polish communities in other countries have also evolved their own language mixtures, e.g.: Polsais, Poldeutsch (or whatever they're called), and if they too, seep into the Polish mainstream?
For centuries Polish absorbed influences of various languages, but the scale of the current impact of English remains unprecedented. Propagated by the media, it spreads like wildfire, entrenching the curious paradox: whereas in previous centuries there was a strong repression of Polish by the occupying forces, there was also a strong resistance to it, whereas nowadays nobody seems to care. Whilst under totalitarianism the impact of neologisms was negligible, nowadays the floodgates have opened up and the torrent of muck gets through them, resulting in a language lacking in style and unintelligible to the natives. I wonder if this should be any less objectionable considering that this is a global phenomenon. After all English spreads around the globe permeating all languages and so various other hybrids, e.g.: Franglais, Spanglish or Gerlish (?) are created. But do they all sound as clumsy as Polglish?