With all the talk about poor English in user manuals I could not resist posting this pic off a label from a pair of shorts I purchased in Spain. I was also amazed whilst I was there of how bad the English information signs were on historical buildings.

Its all Lost in translation but still poor for these day of computer world

If you think that's bad take a look here: http://www.engrish.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Looks like a Google Translate fail!

But, still miles better than 50% of ebay adverts!

Why should they care any way?

English might only be their second or third language if they even speak it all.

I communicate with Taiwanese, Chinese, Korean, Indian, Italian colleagues.... every day......

Their second or third language is shall we say better than any language of mine other than English - yup, we British are generally speaking pretty poor at any other language!

My colleague in Taiwan often refers to our own special language between the two of us as 'Chinglish', which I think is sweet and very respectable - it is as a result of being able to understand our own nuances after more than twelve years of e-mails and telephone calls. Most would struggle to understand these communications, but we understand perfectly and NEVER have a commercial disagreement due to linguistics!

This colleague always replies within one or two hours of my message to him, often within minutes, and never more than four hours regardless of time zone differences.

Now try communicating with someone within our shores but outside of your own areas, Wigan, Liverpool, Glasgow, Swansea, Barnsley, East London........ Now I need a translator!

Tee hee

SYMUK

The sign isn't much worse than the English translation of the manual for the Beverly! The manual is surprisingly poorly translated actually - I don't remember the manuals for my previous Piaggios being that bad.

Talking of manuals, one of the minor puzzles about TMax manuals is that they were translated (very well) into American English - even when the TMax wasn't exported to the USA.

...and they did the roll-out intro of the new Tmax 530 to the WORLD in..Los Angeles. They don't even SELL IT HERE!

Would that make them Wankers?

SkuTorr wrote: Would that make them Wankers?

Yes!