Please to Read for participation discuss #1 quotshut.
Did you just flip me off?
Yes. Based on my interviews in Thailand the person wearing the T-shirt is unlikely to have the slightest idea what the English phrase means. I once saw a 10-year old with a T-shirt phrase so disgusting I won’t even quote it here. It was far far worse than any at the link above.
You got a manual? You lucky. Nothing says they have to include a manual. They’d probably make the same sales if they didn’t, and by the time consumers caught on, they’d move on to another product and brand.
And I burning you dog.
What about this fucking shirt?
These days, machine translations are common, especially on really cheap goods. They just want quick and cheap access to a market outside of China (or sometimes other Asian countries). Looking it up on Google Translate is basically free, and they are keeping costs really low.
Sure, if better translations result in better sales, that can change. But, for a lot of things, it really doesn’t. The people who get it know what they are getting.
This is excluding the restaurant stuff, of course, I agree with everyone above there.
Um, I hate to be the one to break it to you guys, but the ability to write correct and comprehensive directions is not very common among Americans whose native language is English, in my experience.
Exactly. I was looking at the menu of a 5 star restaurant we plan on eating at this weekend and they have, among the “fish from other waters,” halibut caught off Juno, Alaska. That mistake alone should cost them my patronage, but the wife really wants to eat there. So I’ll settle for a nicely worded note slipped to the manager upon exit.
It apparently is harder than I would think, considering the results, but does it have to be that hard?
But I’m not talking about translation, I’m talking about an independent professional proofreader.
What I’m saying is, you take an average 1-2 page instruction sheet for a simple product, with the CEO’s son’s translation, that says “Please to insertion of pugl in too socket”, and find some home business that checks it out for grammar. This business doesn’t have to translate, just check it for readability and grammar. Tell me a kid couldn’t fix that sentence.
And I wouldn’t hire kids - I’d find some in-country American businessman that has time to kill and needs some folding money. I’m not talking a full time position. If I knew how to market myself, I’d start a cottage business doing just that.
But since “saving face” and honor are so all-important over there, I guess I’ll just continue to roll my eyes at the instructions I get.
For great justice!
Yeah, that’s a good plan, but if you don’t know any English, how will you know it’s wrong? Do you think consumers are writing to them from the USA?
I always see it as a signal of a newer, rather than, well established business. With time and more experience in the market, this will get corrected.
Yes, but we should also point out that there is a degree of confirmation bias here.
Who knows how many instruction manuals or product descriptions etc we’ve read that had impeccable English and happen not to have been written in an English-speaking country.
Agree about this though.
I can’t remember who gathered the stats but I recall seeing some statistics on which languages were hardest for native English speakers to learn (as measured by much full-time study it took to achieve a particular, tested, level of speech competence). The top 7 or 8 were all Asian languages and then Russian came in at 9 or 10 IIRC.
Their structure / grammar is very different to English. As I alluded upthread; I know plenty of guys who to speak to seem fluent to me – we can converse on whatever topic. But then when they ask me to proofread something for them, it’s riddled with errors. This phenomenon is partly how these bad translations get through the net – people not realizing their written English is still not fluent plus the unavailability / expense of a fluent English proofreader.
Just noticed how many typos in my post (which mentions I sometimes proofread English!)
Pleasing your forgiveness
Plus the “native speaker” thing is itself crap; many professional translators claim that “it is only possible to translate into your native language” but that’s just a failed attempt at defending their territory (the few actual studies in the subject found out that 1) it’s always better to have a reviewer and 2) best results are obtained when the reviewer and the translator have different native languages). My written English is better than that of many official natives; one of my translation classmates claimed to be a Spaniard when the translation was into Spanish, Galego when into Galego and maternal language Dutch for translations into Dutch. All three things were true.
My Spanish to English teacher was one of those nativists. She almost needed an ambulance when it turned out that all the As and A+s from the first exam were for foreigners (one of them for the Greek), and came up with a shibboleth for the second exam. People who’d “failed” that one item in the second exam got worse grades than those who had not, independently of the rest of the work. And while she did catch all us foreigners, two of the Brits also wrote a century in Roman numerals (which was the shibboleth).
Oh, and the Galego? We were those two A+s from the first exam.
Yeah, that’s interesting. The end result, ironically, is to make them sound dumb–despite the fact that East Asians lead the world in average IQ.
E-DUB, that Gellerese thing was indeed super interesting. I’ve never seen the show, so TIL something new.
Right, exactly. Furthermore, why shouldn’t I go give these a less-than-stellar review? That will hurt their overall average and might discourage someone else from buying.
Ha!!
Yes, this.
And whatever you think about their ad copy or instructions, wouldn’t you expect it to be important to at the very least be careful not to use a short but fucked up audio phrase “please charging” that I’m going to hear many, many times over the next few years (assuming the headphones last)?
I was thinking that was one place they could outsource the copy proofing, but I couldn’t remember what it was called.
I just got a new desk. It is a wonderful desk, but we had to put it together, and one of the instructions was something like, “Please assemble the Philips screwdriver in advance by yourself.”
It said something different in French, and something different in Spanish, and none of them made any sense, separately or together.
What I got from this, reading the French, was to hand screw only, not use a drill. What my husband got, reading Spanish, was to put the Philips screws in first.
This could have been really important!
We did not use a drill, we did put those screws in first, and so far the desk hasn’t fallen apart, but sheesh!
Exactly how big do you think ‘overseas’ is?
There’s an American school in Shuangpaixiang?
I can’t speak for all of Asia, but in Indonesia it’s illegal for foreigners to work without a permit, which can only be obtained by a firm, not the individual. The permits are quite expensive, and there is a limit to how many you can get (only one per X number of Indonesian employees). You have to submit paperwork proving no local could do the job, pay substantial permitting fees, and on top of all that pay an ongoing monthly fee for each foreign employee. It’s too expensive and difficult a process for most companies.
As to starting your own company as a foreigner, it can be done, but under most circumstances it is simply too expensive and bureaucratic to be realistic.
This is not to say that a lot of people don’t work under the table as editors - they do. But the bureaucratic, legal, and financial hurdles certainly contribute to the production of poor English.
That, plus as many people have noted upthread, it’s hard to know that an English language text is riddled with errors if you are not a native speaker. Plus, it is natural to develop a certain confidence in your linguistic abilities after you’ve been using a second language for a while. I know my Indonesian writing is laden with errors, but for any particular sentence that I write, every time I secretly believe it is, if not a model of grammatical perfection, at least very clear and easy to read. I often find out, when I ask for a native speaker’s help, that it’s a lot worse than I think.
All your base are belong to us.
-some Japanese dude
When Joanie Loves Chachi was syndicated in Korea it was embarrassing because Chachi is a homonym for penis.
The Chevy Nova didn’t do well in Spanish speaking countries.
I bet you please charging them tho.
Who the fuck gets paid to translate shit like that. Anyone that is actually any good at two languages can usually get a much better paying higher profile job, at least in Asia
I once saw a no smoking sign in China where the sign said no smoking in Chinese and had purported translations under it. The English translation said “English language”
Both claims are false:
Wait, people read instructions?
Huh. Ignorance fought.
Considering how many American businesses run by native English speakers have trouble with English syntax and grammar, the only weird thing is why more non-Anglophone countries don’t have a problem with this.