Itâs the ONLY way!
Look, this is not an English speaking country. Before you all get out your spears and errors, remember this same thing happens in English texts printed in Thailand, China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, France, Italy, anywhere. Donât just blame blame blame the Taiwanese. If I was a Taiwanese reading this thread, I would kick all of you out of my country!
Itâs true. Itâs pathetic. Even though I loathe ProZ (itâs mostly for cheapskates who care nothing for quality), I still get updates into my email box for new C<>E jobs because Iâm curious what goes on there. Just the other day I decided to respond to a call for âliteraryâ C>E translators, and duly produced a translation into English of a sample of a novel. I then called the agency contact to ask if I could send my sample to him directly instead of posting it on ProZ (I donât have a membership, so I canât do that). He agreed, and mentioned in passing that heâd already received 18 samples, and that to a one they were absolutely terrible.
I chuckled and asked if the translators all had Chinese names. Yes, he replied.
I too am dumbfounded by this mentality, and finally agree that it must have something to do with cultural arrogance. Or, at least, linguistic arrogance, as Chinese is admittedly unique among the worldâs written languages.
One group of C>E translators of which I am a part have what amounts to an open pact never to accept editing jobs from agencies who have shoveled C>E translatons off to local exchange students first in the interest of saving money. Iâve done one or two, and theyâre extremely painful.
Good point. If you look at the English brochures from an Italian company, then you are in for a laugh. Even better, try reading their emails. You often end up wondering what they are trying to tell you.
There is a contact e-mail on the 101 Web site. I bet if enough people wrote to them, they might fix it up a bit.
Nope, sorry. I couldnât disagree more. If you read the postings in this thread, I think you will find that they are written by somewhat professionally minded people who have been working in Taiwan and/or the editing business for a while. These people arenât just bitching for the sake of bitching. Sure, there are plenty of companies/organizations in the countries you listed that also do a crappy job of presenting themselves in English. It is no coincidence, though, that none of these companies are world class âbrands.â When VW, BMW, Volvo, Sony, Honda, etc market themselves in an English speaking country or to a prospective client from an English speaking country, do you think they take the risk of sending them promotional materials that are garbage?
I think there are other posters in this thread who will agree with the way I feel about this. I have seen a lot of companies in both Taiwan and the mainland who have worked really hard to make their internal processes among the best in their fields. They are not lacking in technical expertise. One of the things they do lack is the understanding of how to market themselves to the high end customer. The reality is that the high end customer is quite often from an English speaking country. If Taiwanese companies want to do business with this type of customer, then they will have to show that they pay attention to details. Otherwise, the customer will assume that that the added value of dealing with that potential supplier is just as poor as their ability to market themselves. It is the same as a Chinese company marketing itself to Chinese customers.
I work in a very competitive, low profit margin manufacturing field. I can say that generally, the companies in this field in this area of the world run neck and neck with each other. There is no technical innovation or management approach that one of these companies could adopt to get ahead of the pack. All the others would just adopt it on the next day. None of these innovations would be protected by IP laws. Most of our processes are borrowed from developed countries. The field is not high-tech enough for process/product innovation to be the main factor. The one area where all of the companies are deficient is marketing. They just donât know how to attract foreign customers. They are too focused on the technical process side of things while they completely ignore all the intangible factors. Good language in marketing is one of these intangible factors. Otherwise, the customer usually wonât see the potential in doing business with that company.
Worse does happen in other places:
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3186936.stm
It doesnât excuse it though when there are plenty of people willing and able to fix it.
for world class brands yes. perfect english is required. but for the Taipei101 sky raper? that is no world class brand, it is just an ugly phallic symbol ruining the gentle skyline. it deserves bad englishy.
but JIVE TURKEY, your points are well taken and you are right.
[quote=âformosaâ]for world class brands yes. perfect English is required. but for the Taipei101 sky raper? that is no world class brand, it is just an ugly phallic symbol ruining the gentle skyline. it deserves bad englishy.
but JIVE TURKEY, your points are well taken and you are right.[/quote]
Yeah, Iâm sure they have absolutely no interest in attracting any foreign companies to lease office space there. Having a few large, multi-national corporations who always pay their rent on time is just plain bad business. Then again, even if a foreign company were impressed by any slick marketing for Taipei 101, they still wouldnât move in since foreigners arenât allowed to have phones in Taiwan. Oops, another thread. Weâre in complete agreement about the thing being ass ugly, though.
Moaning about the poor Englishy when you work in a local company can have unintended consequenses. I did once I started in my present job. My reward? Getting to rewrite everything.
All I can say is that Taiwanese English is better than Japanese⌠( I swear and not to be mean or rude) The translation might be bad, at least it is understable, right??? 
MW is right. In Japan, they would write: âAs one up goes to the 101 Kai of the taipei 101st floor, visitors will see a small chube that has been put near the beddo. This is where one is pleased asked to sleepu.â
I fail to understand why any sensible person would use the âofficialâ Taipei 101 website â an indeed high quality piece of work that is updated no more than four times a year, and cannot exceed the popularity of several unofficial T101 websites.
Hakka Sonic wrote:
[quote]Mucha (Muzha) (Muzha) Man wrote:
50 guanxi to anyone who can explain, and cite a credible source, the difference between âpoint toâ and point at."
You âpoint atâ things, you âpoint toâ facts. So says the guy beside me and he looks pretty credible.[/quote]
Not bad but speech and published material (teaching guides in particular) suggest that the two are interchangeable. Most native speakers feel there is a slight difference between the two but canât define it.