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Taiwanglish |
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Yesterday (yes, yesterday) I bought a dual-purpose pen
for my sweetie, who likes pens and that sort of thing. It allows you
to record up to 90 seconds of audio (and it writes). But the Taiwanese
manufacturer didn't hire a very good translator for the instruction sheet
that came with it.
Below are some examples. Take a moment and read every one. |
System. My second favorite is their description of the "Auto Shutdown System." System is an impressive word, or at least it should be, and I think it's overused a lot by advertisers for the purpose of over-impressing people. Most things called systems by advertisers are just that -- things, not systems. A rain forest is a system, a robotic auto assembly line is a system, and the network of computers through which you're reading this very sentence is a system, but my mattress is not a sleep system, my shampoo is not a hair-care system, and my George Foreman grill is not a cooking system. No matter how many times you hear that a George Foreman grill is a "cooking system," here's how it works.
That's it. No system -- no complicated interactions, no far-ranging relationships depending on feed-back loops or homeostasis -- just plug it in and it gets hot. It's a lot less complicated than a 1950's-vintage toaster. In the Taiwanglish example above, their eattery-saving "Auto Shutdown System" means that if you stop pushing a button that does something, it stops doing it.
Update of November, 2001: Here's another system that isn't. This message appears on every 32-ounce bottle of Powerade, the Coca-Cola Company's rival for the Gatorade market. More here about this later. |
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