PLAIN ENGLISH INSTRUCTIONS "NOT ON YOUR LIFE"

TinderBox (UK)

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Hi.

Strangely worded instructions.

633259409212767500.jpg


from this website.

regards

John.
 

Mash

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I have always wondered, how hard is it really for someone in china/japan/east of here to find a cousin, friend, relative, dog, whatever who actually speaks semi proper english and run these "instructions" past them before they are actually printed?
I mean give me one day and from relatives acquaintences or friends of friends etc, I guarantee I can find probably people who can cover 95% of the worlds languages.
How hard can it be?
 

Illum

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very much info gets lost in translation between any two languages
I remember may moons ago in school [back in Taiwan] where we memorize English per word and its associated meanings...but when you want to chain the meanings up we usually start by chaining up the the individual word's definition to convoy what we want to say, but the actual sentence of the words becomes...well, far from grammatically correct. If the writer was sequencing the word definition in the grammar of his/her home country...its going to go beyond gibberish. sometimes you can only sit back and compliment those who have tried to imitate what Americans take for granted in happy frustration...
 

Marduke

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Hilarious! But keep in mind, English is one of the hardest languages out there to learn if you didn't grow up around it.
 

Avatar28

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Agreed. It doesn't help that English has over twice as many words as any other language on the planet. Not only that, it's such a *******ized language with bits and pieces culled from so many others that about the only consistent rule is that there are no consistent rules.
 

Qoose

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I have always wondered, how hard is it really for someone in china/japan/east of here to find a cousin, friend, relative, dog, whatever who actually speaks semi proper english and run these "instructions" past them before they are actually printed?
I mean give me one day and from relatives acquaintences or friends of friends etc, I guarantee I can find probably people who can cover 95% of the worlds languages.
How hard can it be?

Actually, that may be why it's so bad. You go to the local self claimed english speaking dog, and he might give you something, but you will have no clue if it is correct. It might also be because it's a lot easier to read than to write.

Kinda like those tattoo shops who will give you some random characters, tell you it means "brave soul", but actually wrote "this is a sad boy".

Still sad though. I'm sure than an internet translator could do better. At least there would be no typos.
 

tebore

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Agreed. It doesn't help that English has over twice as many words as any other language on the planet. Not only that, it's such a *******ized language with bits and pieces culled from so many others that about the only consistent rule is that there are no consistent rules.

Try memorizing all the characters in the chinese language.

I'm with you with the *******ized part.
 

LukeA

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Try memorizing all the characters in the chinese language.

If I'm not mistaken, the characters are pictures the meanings of which are divinable from how they look and they way thay're drawn, which is more than you can say for English words.
 

jzmtl

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Hilarious! But keep in mind, English is one of the hardest languages out there to learn if you didn't grow up around it.

Not by a long shot! Try french grammar, talk about a nightmare. :duh2:

Not gona even start on the squiggly line languages, like arabic. :green:
 

Valolammas

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But keep in mind, English is one of the hardest languages out there to learn if you didn't grow up around it.

No it isn't! Granted, English is very difficult if you want to be good at it, because it has so many irregularities. But it's a very easy language to pick up the basics of, hence its popularity as a lingua franca around the world.
 

tebore

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If I'm not mistaken, the characters are pictures the meanings of which are divinable from how they look and they way thay're drawn, which is more than you can say for English words.

They sure are but it's not easy when you have to write the characters that aren't "Nouns" and it's like playing a game of silent pictionary.

How would you draw dignity? (Best examples from the simpsons)

At least with english you can sound it out.
 

tebore

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Not by a long shot! Try french grammar, talk about a nightmare. :duh2:

Not gona even start on the squiggly line languages, like arabic. :green:

You know what's funny. If you've learned french and other languages like say Portuguese you'd be saying English is backwards in Grammar because in english we don't have feminine and masculine nouns.

My point is language itself is an amazing invention and some are harder than others.
 

Secur1

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I actually work in a translation agency, so things like these don't really surprise me....

You should read some of the work related e-mails we receive from Korean companies.... they make Yoda sound like Queen of England...
 

Secur1

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Hilarious! But keep in mind, English is one of the hardest languages out there to learn if you didn't grow up around it.

Are you serious ?!!!!
Take a look at Mandarin, or Russian and lastly my native language Greek and then tell me if you think English is hard...

Forgot to mention: As far as the Original post goes, the company that produced the equipment used a local (Korean or Chinese) company to do the translation for them and probably wanted it cheap so they didn't pay extra for proof reading by a native speaker (english in this case). End result was achieved by using programs like SDLX or Trados which do the translation automatically, by someone who has a very narrow/basic understanding of english.
 
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Avatar28

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Are you serious ?!!!!
Take a look at Mandarin, or Russian and lastly my native language Greek and then tell me if you think English is hard...

Forgot to mention: As far as the Original post goes, the company that produced the equipment used a local (Korean or Chinese) company to do the translation for them and probably wanted it cheap so they didn't pay extra for proof reading by a native speaker (english in this case). End result was achieved by using programs like SDLX or Trados which do the translation automatically, by someone who has a very narrow/basic understanding of english.

Actually, I have had other people (who learned English later in life) tell me the same thing (including my Spanish teacher in high school, who was from Spain originally). A lot of it comes down to your native language too. But what makes English so difficult to learn fluently is all of the idiosyncrasies, the irregular verbs, homophones (sail and sale or cell and sell for instance, all four of which are close enough in pronunciation by most people to sound virtually identical), etc
 

Secur1

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Ok then i'll rephrase my original statement and say that English to ME is not a difficult language to learn as I find it very poor.
Also keep in mind that, if i am not mistaken, 68% of the English language is derived from Greek, with the rest of it comming from the Latin and Nordik languages.

OFF TOPIC PS: GREECE 5 - MALTA 0 for the European cup qualifiers :D
 

cnlight

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You laugh on this piece of text only because you didn't see some of the more hilarious "English translations" for certain Chinese menus / dish names.

As a mandarin linguist myself I couldn't help laughing sometimes seeing these kinds of stuff...
 
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