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
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 can be used in any field in which it is difficult to create a good result when given bad input. For example, in translation, it is difficult to convert a source text that is confused, illogical or missing pertinent information into a quality translation. A translator may use the phrase “Garbage in, garbage out” to explain the importance of good source text to a client. As another example, in quality implications, the quality of the materials a manufacturer procures directly affects the quality of the finished product.
Poor quality source material certainly isn’t an excuse for translators to produce garbage translations (that would just make us garbage translators). I’m not talking here about mistakes in source material, by the way — I’ll discuss that in future posts. But poorly written source text certainly makes our job harder.
Sticking with the translation example, you could rephrase Wikipedia’s last sentence above as: “…the quality of the translations an organisation procures directly affects the quality of their international image, reputation and credibility”. Organisations commissioning translations on a lowest-price basis are, frankly, asking for QIGO: Quality In, Garbage Out.
The ideal outcome is QIQO: Quality In, Quality Out. But how to attain it? I’ll be writing more posts on this topic, so keep tuned. And in the meantime, your comments are welcome, as always!
By Marian Dougan
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 Scottish network:
FITTA This car was hastily rebranded the “Jazz” for the Scandinavian market after Honda discovered that “fitta” is a colloquial term for a woman’s private parts in no less than 3 Nordic languages.
PINTO Car-maker Ford thought the better of this name in Brazil when it transpired that “Pinto” is Brazilian Portuguese slang for small male genitals. Not quite the image they were trying to promote! (The car was rebadged “Corcel”, which has a suitably manly meaning of “horse”)
PAJERO This word is a colloquialism denoting masturbation in Spanish, so Mitsubishi saw the wisdom of renaming its “Pajero” SUV as the “Montero” in Spanish-speaking countries.
The New York Times recently published an article on the exotic names surfacing in China’s car industry: the Freedom Ship, the Beauty Leopard and the King Kong, for example, are models produced by the Geely company. I’m not sure I’d want to drive around in a King Kong. Or in a Roewe:
Shanghai Auto came up with Roewe, a Roverish name with Chinese characteristics. However, one can only assume that quiet consternation engulfed company headquarters when it was discovered that the Chinese version for Roewe — Rongwei — sounds close to English-language Wrong Way.
Oh dear.
Have you got any examples of branding or product-naming gone wrong? Let us know in the comments.
More about car-naming:
The car industry’s poet laureate, or what’s in a name.
The photo, courtesy of David Perez, shows cars zig-zagging down San Francisco’s Lombard Street.
By Marian Dougan
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 the occasional grumble, you get a lot of in the translation business.
Here, in short, is what they say about translation and interpreting:
Whether it’s sign language, spoken language, or written language, interpreters and translators are utilizing an invaluable skill. If you are fluent in a second language, you could find yourself working in a lucrative, secure, and growing position. The Labor Department predicts more than 42 percent employment growth in this profession over the coming decade.
And here’s the longer report on the translation and interpreting professions.
What do you think, folks? Is your job in the list? And if it isn’t, should it be?
See also: The Jobs of the future… include translating
By Marian Dougan
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 the lovely and talented (just like her Mum – not!) Olivia Dougan Naio
By Marian Dougan
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 Crystal extends a helping hand to the confused and curious alike. […] He unearths the stories behind the rogue words that confound us, and explains why these peculiarities entered the mainstream […] By learning the history and the principles, Crystal shows how the spellings that break all the rules become easier to get right.
This book would make a good present for anyone looking for a not-too-heavy read on the history of English and how the language developed. Or for people learning English and trying to make sense of the spelling. Or indeed for teachers, struggling to answer their students’ awkward questions about the language (there’s nothing like students’ awkward questions for showing up the gaps in your own knowledge).
The bonus is, it’s too late to buy it at Amazon in time for Christmas so you’ll be able to support your local bookshop.
Previous posts about spelling:
By Marian Dougan
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” and “MPs dismayed by ‘total chaos’ of £42m lost in translation”.
Translators and interpreters will not be the least bit surprised by these reports.
As a translator from Italian, I see painfully bad translations day in, day out, on Italian websites. Often the websites of prestigious public sector bodies.
Italian public sector translations: from bad to worse
Distinguished public figures – the Presidents and Chairmen and -women of Italian public sector organisations – are made to sound both pretentious and semi-literate in English.
Economics/statistics bodies publish wildly inaccurate information about Italy (the numbers are OK, but the English-language copy interpreting them is utterly wrong).
Regional tourism bodies invite visitors to sample the “peculiarities”, rather than the “unique features”, of their regions.
And with Italy’s public sector organisations awarding translation contracts based purely, or primarily, on lowest-price bids, this sort of garbage will only get worse. How could it be otherwise?
If Italy wants to be taken seriously on the international stage, it really should not be placing its international reputation in the hands of charlatans.
By Marian Dougan
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 for professional printing or internet use.
Written for both the new and experienced iWork user, this book is a step-by-step guide to creating dazzling graphics, unique clip art, logos, and sophisticated designs to rival top-end professional programs”.
You can even use Numbers to “demystify Excel spreadsheets”, so that can’t be bad.
Added bonus: the author, Alexander Anichkin, is a translator (among lots of other things), and the author of the I Work in Pages blog.
Not a bonus, but necessary disclosure: I was very marginally involved with the production of this book, as a pre-publication reviewer.
By Marian Dougan
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 computer manual isn’t what you’d expect to find underneath the Christmas tree. But Peachpit’s guides are written in an ungeeky, user-friendly style — especially those by the wonderful Robin Williams. Who is not a comedian or actor but an expert in design, typography, Shakespeare, and all things Mac. Her books convey all the delights of using a Mac and are themselves a delight to read.
By Marian Dougan
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 that specialise in books in translation.
Hersilia Press is “an independent publisher bringing you the best of Italian crime fiction”. They say on their website:
A writer is like a composer and the translator is the performer — there is a high level of skill in both, and both have to do a good job for the performance to be of good quality.
Music to translators’ ears!
So if you know someone who’s caught the Montalbano bug, then you should find the ideal gift to broaden their crime horizon at Hersilia.
Peirene Press is
an award-winning boutique publishing house with an extra twist, based in London. We are committed to first class European literature in high quality translation.
They offer contemporary European literature that is “thought provoking, well designed, short”. Once again, Peirene is offering subscription gift packages for Christmas 2012.
Give the gift of translation!
By Marian Dougan