Posted on 09/25/2001 11:17:32 AM PDT by hellinahandcart
Years ago when I had a wholesale camera repair business, we "invested" (more money than I ever care to think about) in quite a few repair manuals for a variety of Japanese cameras.
Imagine paying fifty bucks or more for a thick stack of "all your base" grade technical literature. Then imagine doing it over and over and over and...
The conventional wisdom at the time (supposedly based [he said 'based'] on fact) was that the Japanese prided themselves on their mastery of the English language, and thus steadfastly refused to allow any native speakers (of the English language) to write, translate, or proofread their "literature".
The result was what we referred to as "Janglish". Hurts my eyes just thinking about it.
Two examples (from memory):
A Minolta manual had a big chart that listed cross-compatibility between several of their models. When there was no match, the box didn't say "N/A". It said "Uselessness." Yes, truly so.
I spent a long time trying to figure out the stern warning at the top of the page (I believe it was the first schematic page for a Nikon F3). It said "Warning! Wear goves! Must be erathed!"
I knew it was serious stuff, I just didn't know what it was.
I finally deduced that "goves" were "gloves", and "erathed" was "earthed" which meant "grounded". In other words, ground your equipment and don't touch the circuit with your oily fingertips.
Yup, "Japanese just doesnt translate very well into english".
If they offend, offend back!
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