venskabsby sb adopted town, twin town
-er (også)paired towns, twinned towns, twin towns; være ~ med be twinned with.
Once again, this should be marked as UK English. Twin town just sounds plain silly in American English. There are twin cities (Minneapolis/St. Paul for example), but twin towns? The entry should have included the North American term: sister city.
Google hits:
twin town - 254,000
sister city - 835,000
It drives me crazy that they don't include the term that is actually way more common! I'm not saying "take the UK" terms out. I'm saying, mark them as being what they are: unintelligible to the majority of US English speakers. And include the US term. Please!
1 comment:
I just learned about your very interesting blog today. I think the root of the problem – “dictionaries do not provide a translation that is viable in U.S. English” – is twofold: first, European dictionary publishers to not engage American lexicographers to work on the English side of their bilingual dictionaries; they hire Brits. Secondly, they rely too heavily on British dictionaries rather than American ones. Distance is part of the problem, but American dictionary publishers may also be partly to blame, by being unduly insular from a global perspective. Keep up the good work!
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