China Eastern gets lost in translation
Airline China Eastern appears to have used Google Translator to change the copy of its ad today on page 7 of the Australian Financial Review into English.
If the ‘Crispy touched screen’ doesn’t get you then surely the ‘Diversification choices of movies’ mentioned in the ad will have you flocking to their website.And once there you can take advantage of offers like this:
It’s embarrassing how widespread this behaviour is from companies who have the resources to avoid it. It happens just as often in the reverse, from English to Chinese. But we don’t tend to hear quite as much about that in Australia.
@Andy: Re: “It happens just as often in the reverse, from English to Chinese. But we don’t tend to hear quite as much about that in Australia.”
It certainly does happen. I had a project where ‘TV Channel’ was translated into Chinese as ‘TV Undersea Valley’. (An obvious option – a channel at sea is kinda an ‘Undersea Valley’)
Two disturbing features:
1. The translation was done by a highly respected (and very expensive) translators
2. Not a single customer in China complained to us. They just accepted that this was the kind of low-quality Chinglish they would expect from Australian projects.
A bit of an eye-opener !
— Mac
Chinese Megan Draper is loving that crispy touched screen
@Mac – No reverse translation from independent translators? Asking for trouble…
Its a bit of a LOL really.
Mr Mumbrella…hello?? Is English your first language? It is probably not theirs.
But what is YOUR excuse for repeated posts featuring poor grammar or spelling?! I’d love someone in the forum to take up a tally of just how bad this had been, but of course, who really cares about that…oh..apparently you do.
No points awarded this game to fellow copyright editors, but are you thinking of awarding a prize at the end?
Hi F,
Thanks for the comment.
I think you miss the main point, which is they have placed a dozen words in one of two national newspapers on a carefully art directed ad, which has cost thousands of dollars to create and place.
Yep we do make some mistakes (more than I would like – which would be none) but when you have a team of four turning out thousands of words per day unfortunately that does happen.
Cheers,
Alex – editor, Mumbrella
AdGrunt,
Reverse translation (usually called back translation) is a very blunt tool. Yes it ensures accuracy but crushes creativity – much better to use a collaboration process between writers, translators and client. Means your ad stays grunty and costs about the same.
I once worked as an ‘English polisher’/editor for a Beijing-based publisher. Many a time I would correct the Chinglish copy submitted to me, only to have my revisions rejected and the original mangled prose published. This was usually because the minions did not want to offend the boss or ‘VIP client’ who wrote the crap.