On the product label of a 3-piece ethernet cable/adapter set:
“Idea for connect almost anything to your USB devices”
WTF?!? The cable has two RJ-45 connectors. One adapter is a marginally useful (very marginally useful in an emergency situation, I suppose) Female/Female RJ-45 connector and one completely useless RJ-45 splitter (anyone who’d use such a thing instead of using a router, hub or switch needs their head examined, IMO).
No USB cable or adapters whatsoever.
And note the fractured English, which was probably intended to convey, “Ideal for connecting… ” Yep. Made by slave labor in China.
Oh, I read the back for more amusement, such as,
“This product contains chemicals, including lead; know [sic] to the states [sic] of California… “
Wow. Chinese slave labor as founts of wisdom noting the gaseous, liquid and solid states of California? Somnolent state vs waking state? What?
And,
“When you open package please use scissors and cut along perforation… “
You guessed it: no perforations.
There was more, but these were enough to provide me with a bit of amusement.
I love Engrish packaging. 🙂
What disturbs me even more is when American companies…usually based out of Tennessee, or Louisiana…do pretty much the same thing.
There is no excusing what the yellow peril has done to English but it bothers us more than it should given the fact that they remain a third-world backwater that at no time in recorded history has ever contributed a nit to civilization. Whale penis broth for strong blood or lion-tongue soup to cure the ague doesn’t count.
Bothers me too when an entire nation has no attention to detail nor the capability for linear thinking. I can vividly recall when it was going to be the Japanese who finally owned us, up until they became westernized, too, and China is far more hollow than Japan ever was nor could ever be so this nanosecond and a half of paper-wealth cannot last…so…
It might be in their better interest to at learn how to spell or hire someone with a passing interest in grammar.
Well, Fits, I’ve seen comparable prose from graduates of American colleges, not quite this bad but close. *sigh*
In David’s example I’m sure it’s poor attention to detail, but Asian languages are very different in grammar and structure from English as compared to other European languages. And many European languages are different enough.
Part of the problem is that language to some degree dictates what you can think in addition to how. It begins with grammar and syntax and extends to basic concepts. For example, in Gaelic, word order throws attempts at translation for a loop at first. Switching from subject-verb-object in English to verb-subject-object is just the beginning. In Gaelic there is no word meaning “yes” or “no” for starters or no verb meaning to “have”. Instead to affirm a statement you respond with the assertive form of the verb used in the statement and to respond in the negative you use the negative dependant form of the verb. To indicate that you “have” something you say that it is “at” you, or in the case of states of being that it is “on” you or “with” you.
I’ve seen machine translators that can translate many languages that can accept their output as input for a reverse translation and give results that are very close for most European languages. These same translators give VERY different results when translating from English to Chinese and back again. Not onlybdoes the structure of what’s said change, but even the basic meaning. Don’t judge ane entire people based on the difficulty of translating their language into another. There are, after all, far more Chinese and Japanese who can speak fluent English than Americans who can even speak basic Chinese or Japanese. If you’ve ever tried learning another language as an adult you’ll realize how much effort and attention to detail it requires. Don’t forget either that first generation Asian immigrants outperform the average American in academic pursuits (on average) here either.
This company’s documentation problems aren’t a reflection on Chinese society. Rather, they reflect on the laziness of wage-slaves and the poor choices made by management. I have collected dozens of examples of the same problems made by American wage slaves and their masters. This example is by far the most egregious I’ve seen lately though.
Oh, I could tell, Perri, that this product and its packaging was made by slave labor in China w/o even bothering to check the “Made in” label by the kinds of language (and technical–although the differences between USB and RJ-45 connectors is hardly high tech) errors.
And you are very right in asserting that the language one uses places strictures on how (and even what) one can think, not just say. That’s one reason politicians *gag-spit*, Mass MEdia Podpeople, Academia Nut Fruitcakes and the like all misuse words deliberately and insist that folks use their idiosyncratic meanings until they can assert theirs is the normative. Of course it does, as you demonstrate, go even further than simply manipulation of semantics (meaning!), as syntax imposes its own structure on the way thoughts can be expressed and even, in some cases, what.
I often wonder whether the near chaos of some Far Eastern Asian languages almost compels an attraction to the structure of maths and classical music so often observed among Chinese and other similar folks.
The Romance languages most of us are familiar with–those with strong roots in Latin–all have clearcut syntax that follows (mostly) clear rules. English, as perhaps the most successful bastardized tongue ever is a wee tad different. It’s the brute of languages: more prone to waylaying other languages and mugging them for useful participles than orderly growth and structure, and yet… its structure is really quite simple compared to Far Eastern Asian languages, at least according to folks who are accomplished speakers of several different dialects of Chinese (Cantonese, Mandarin, Min, Wu, etc.–though native in one) who’ve expounded to me. Of course, standard Mandarin is the written language common to Chinese nearly everywhere, but when read by native speakers of various dialects, I have been told, different meanings are inferred from the same texts, or can be. Much, much moreso than written “British” English and written “American” English, where usually the differences are almost entirely (almost) simply differences of vocabulary. Weird.