On Tue, 30 Dec 2008 13:44:59 -0500, the infamous "Ed Huntress"
scrawled the following:


"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
.. .
On Tue, 30 Dec 2008 01:08:21 -0500, the infamous "Ed Huntress"
scrawled the following:


"Gerald Miller" wrote in message
...

I got SWMBO an electronic, piano type keyboard to play with. One item
on the Safety Precautions page reads:

QUAKEPROOF
The electronic keyboard shall be handled with care when moving,
Violent quake and collision are forbidden so as not to damage the
crust or inner electronic components.

Another:

ANTI-CORROSION

The electronic keyboard shall not get to acid or alkaline matter and
shall not work where contains heavy caustic gas in order to prevent
bad contact resulting from oxidation of line.
Gerry :-)}
London, Canada

More of that Polish junk, eh?

We once had a drawing of a Japanese machine at _American Machinist_ with
a
feature that no one could figure out -- labeled Water Goat. It took
about
a
week, until Bob Hatschek, I think, realized that the Water Goat was a
hydraulic ram. d8-)

Bwahahahaha!


It also features a "stereo earphone faucet"

Good 'un!


Those people need an editor. g

They have one. Surely a lot of these came from their turning to the
fabulous, online marvel known as Babelfish, eh? Oh, you meant a
_real_ editor, didn't you?

All this reminds me of the Viet gal with whom I used to work. She
occasionally puffed out her chest and boasted "I speak very English!"
after we'd giggled at some phrase she'd misspoken. She was fun.

The Australian and British marketing managers for Sodick and I (I was US
sales and marketing manager at the time) got together and asked Japan to let
us edit their brochures before they were printed. We said we'd do it for
free. They wouldn't let us. Finally I found out it was a cultural thing; it
would be an insult to the agencies they'd hired to do this in Japan.

I'd have thought that _proper_ translations would have been the "saved
face" they sought. Go figure.


Unfortunately, they did their writing with a Japanese-English dictionary in
one hand (thus, things like "water goat") and no spell-checker. Nor did they
have anyone who knew how to spell English. It produced some horribly
embarrassing brochures.

Our solution was to throw theirs out and to produce our own.

That was a good idea.

--
We should take care not to make the intellect our god;
it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.
-- Albert Einstein