Oh Lord, I’ve just discovered a brand that’s a perfect marriage of product names and GIGO. (A pure coincidence, I swear). I bring you GIGO underwear, “100% MADE IN COLOMBIA”. Watch your back, David Beckham. By Marian Dougan
Author archives: Marian Dougan
From GIGO to QIQO: the quest for quality
GIGO stands for “Garbage In, Garbage Out”. According to Wikipedia, the term was coined by George Fuechsel, an IBM technician/instructor in New York (but see also Michael Quinion’s version, at World Wide Words). Interestingly (well, it’s interesting if you’re a translator), Wikipedia’s definition of GIGO used to include the following: Non-computer-related use of the term The term …
The Wrong Way to name a car: international branding blunders
Product naming is an important part of branding and marketing, and one where international businesses can make costly mistakes if they fail to understand local language, slang, and all the connotations of a given word. Here are a couple of potential branding disasters in the car industry, courtesy of the Institute of Translation and Interpreting’s …
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Translation as a career? It’s right up there!
Well, well, well. Guess which profession in the top 20 jobs for 2013? Translation and interpreting! The list was complied by US News, which ranks the top 100 jobs on the basis of their mosaic of employment opportunity, good salary, manageable work-life balance, and job security. To which I would add: job satisfaction. Which, notwithstanding …
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Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year
Sadly, it’s not snowing this year here in the UK — we’re having a very wet, not a white, Christmas. This photo was taken a couple of years ago, when we did have a lot of snow. But whether it’s white or not, I hope you have a happy and peaceful Christmas. Photo courtesy of …
A last-minute Christmas gift for spelling-challenged book lovers
Just enough time for one more gift idea for book lovers: “Spell It Out –The Singular Story of English Spelling”, by David Crystal. In the words of the publishers, Profile Books: Seventy-five per cent of English spelling is regular but twenty-five per cent is complicated, and in Spell It Out, our foremost linguistics expert David …
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Omnishambles: object-lessons in how not to contract out language services
“An object-lesson in how not to contract out a public service”. That’s how the Rt Hon Margaret Hodge MP, Chair of the Committee of Public Accounts, described the centralised system for supplying interpreters to the justice system. (See also my previous post on Ministry of Justice language services). Headlines have included: “Court interpreter farce halts murder trial” …
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Christmas gifts for Mac users (2): an iWork “cookbook”
For Mac users who still haven’t ventured away from Microsoft Office, the “iWork for Mac OS X Cookbook” by Alexander Anichkin provides lots of ideas on how to create great documents and presentations. The iWork suite consists of Pages (word processing), Numbers (spreadsheets) and Keynote (presentations). According to Packt Publishing, you can: “Use iWork to create high quality documents …
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Christmas books for Mac users
Macs are great computers but we don’t always use (or even know about) their full potential. If you know someone who’s recently bought a Mac, or who’s had their Mac for ages but doesn’t use it to full effect (who does?), then a Peachpit Press user guide might make a good present. I know — a …
Christmas gifts for book-lovers (and translators!)
Books always make wonderful Christmas presents. They can be beautiful objects in themselves, so lovely to open on Christmas morning. And then there’s the lasting pleasure as you read, enjoy, and remember the content. If you know any translators, they’re sure to appreciate a book from Peirene Press or Hersilia Press — two publishing houses …
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