How would the first guy know about the second (and subsequent) guys? All he would know is that his translation services are no longer required in the future. Unless the situation where it is the CEO or other pushy boss doing the translating is a common one.
It’s like “Gellerese” in reverse.
The general case of this problem is a hard one: How do you know that the contractor you’ve hired with claimed expertise at something that you can’t do is any good?
It’s easy to say “just get a native speaker to read it”, but how do you know who’s a native speaker? Actually verifying that is going to be potentially difficult and expensive.
And most native English speakers aren’t going to speak your native language, which means you have to rely on translation services to engage them in the first place. Which means you have to trust your translator. Because otherwise your translator could very easily show you a nonsense conversation run through Google translate and say “yeah, this guy says it looks perfect. The Queen’s own English.”
I will not buy these headphones - they are scratched. Do you want to come back to my place bouncey-bouncey?
Regards,
Shodan
Interesting!
Hilarious!
My theory is that the translator is the son in law of a guy who sits on the board of directors.
Lots of work for the workers at Amazon Mechanical Turk!
There’s the story of the huge American company that wanted its name transliterated into “ko-ka-ko-la,” but that has been debunked by Snopes.
Well, that’s the risk with everything, from translating manuals to refinishing your kitchen.
But, aside from finding some smart ass that “translates” “put the plug in the socket” to “stick the plug up your ass”, even a 10 year old at the International School can do better than “All Your Base Are Belong To Us.”
Basically this. For example, with Mandarin Chinese: Mandarin and English are different enough, and the ties between mainland china and the West tenuous enough (until recently) that people truly fluent in both and willing to be translators are relatively rare and costly.
What’s much more common is, say, Chinese people who’ve spent some time in the West or working for a Western company, who basically get by with oral English, and don’t realize how bad their grammar or spelling is.
Also, for no reason, another Engrish example. Sadly, I didn’t take a good enough picture to submit it to Engrish.com. A fancy coffee house, with their name written, in stylish calligraphy: “Fanny Face” :smack:
Happy evening Sir! We make quality product our #1 satisfaction for customer. We make best product customer is afford to pay for.
I don’t speak Chinese, so I can’t address that specific question, but I’ve seen hilariously bad Spanish translations on bilingual labeling on products from major US companies, and as a percentage of the population there are probably more fluent Spanish speakers in the US than fluent English speakers in China.
I think the major problem in all cases is that the people supervising the translators don’t speak the language well enough to properly evaluate the results, and nobody wants to pay for a second look by somebody who really knows the language.
It’s not just China. You see the same all over Asia. It’s just because the people paying for the translation, don’t know the language. Like if you had something translated into Arabic, you wouldn’t know if it was right or not.
One of my favourites, painted on a proudly hung banner in foot high letters, ‘Patty Tonigh’ (Party Tonight!)
Two years ago in Cambodia, in the box lunch on the bus, was a toothpick in a paper wrapper, with Phnom Penh, Cambodia written on it. Except every single word was mis spelled. Every one! I have a photo somewhere.
Which is likely a loss of face for the individual AND the company that was relying on the substandard work.
To use an analogy, let’s say your company is trying to break into some market and just not getting traction. Someone suggests that you just pay a bribe to someone to grease things along. Odds are that Americans would find this suggestion as something they just couldn’t bring themselves to do, even though it might be the practical solution.
Similarly, getting some Asian businesses to agree to lose face is something that they might not be able to bring themselves to do, even though it is the common sense solution in our opinion.
I bought a Lukas Ara dash camera for my car a few years ago and I absolutely love it. Clear, crisp, color high def videos, with sound. Made in S Korea.
The instruction booklet was entirely incomprehensible!
Was no one in the entire company capable of English? I mean, it is a pretty common language in the market you are seeking. Other Korean business’ make products for the US market. My phone works just fine.
I just ended up treating the dash cam like it was a new Microsoft upgrade written by someone with no real world social skills. Like every Windows thing so far.
I think that part of the issue is that the products are often primarily marketed for local consumption. China and Japan are large enough markets in themselves that their products do not have to be successful in the US in order to turn a profit.
//i\
Relying on random English-speaking children for translation services seems unlikely to produce the kind of accurate and professional translation that seems to be lacking in the current system.
It seems to me you’re saying that this should be really easy, and I’m saying, well, it’s harder than you think.
Do we both agree that it seems to get screwed up fairly often? If so, that points to “it’s harder than you think.”
Maybe, think about it this way: Pick a language that neither you nor someone you know personally speaks natively. How much time and expense would it take to translate this post into that language? How many people would you have to talk to to feel, say, 99% confident that it’s correct? And even that level of confidence still means massive numbers of mistranslations in the wild.
It’s not just merch that’s shipped to the states. Apparently it’s chic to wear shirts with English phrases and slogans in Asia.
Some of these are just too funny.
I have wondered about this myself. Sure, translating a longish technical document might be expensive, but many of the most glaring errors occur in very brief notices. Notices so brief that the first tourist encountered would have been happy to correct the grammar for free.
I suspect that part of the problem may involve “face saving.” The firm may have a university graduate believed to be competent in English. To double-check his translation would be an insult.
The state of English teaching in Thailand is extremely sad. Many Thais teaching English should have flunked the very class they’re teaching! There’s a big market here for foreigners to teach English; the foreigner needn’t even come from an English-speaking country. I know a Frenchman who taught English for a while in a private school whose English is bad enough that he often substitutes “she” for “he.”