pne: A picture of a plush toy, halfway between a duck and a platypus, with a green body and a yellow bill and feet. (Default)
Philip Newton ([personal profile] pne) wrote2004-11-12 02:58 pm

How not to make a good impression on "international" customers

...by not translating things properly.

In this case, it was an image in an email newsletter from Kodak, advertising Ofoto greeting cards with photographs. The email contained the following image showing how easy it is to get at your greeting cards:

Unfortunately, the text in the third box (with caption “Write a personal note”) is spelled wrong—I suppose they were going for „Fröhliches…“ (“Happy…”, “Merry…”), though I'd probably write either „Frohes (Neues Jahr/Fest)“ or „Fröhliche (Weihnachten)“ at this time of the year, so I'm not quite sure what word they thought would go behind that: „Fröhliches Neues Jahr“ sounds unidiomatic to me.

So they just made themselves look silly and unprofessional (IMO) for including such a bad translation in the image.

[identity profile] elgrande.livejournal.com 2004-11-12 10:47 am (UTC)(link)
Fröhliches Weihnachtsfest?

[identity profile] nik-w.livejournal.com 2004-11-12 04:43 pm (UTC)(link)
Have you emailed them and told them how stupid they look? They might thank you and send you gift vouchers!;)