How To Scare Off Potential Foreign Language Clients
How important is translation for your marketing?
I had previously missed this e-mail because it was caught by my e-mail account’s spam filter, and I noticed the heading just as I was deleting the whole lot in one go.
But thanks to spamming stupidity, it was here today again and I opened it.
Yes I know this was risky, considering some recent experience, but I am of a curious disposition and willing to take risks, and how could I resist the lure of this heading?
Nous avons beaucoup de programme de la lange FRANCAISES!
Because most of my readers are anglophones, let me try to be creative -I just love allowing myself to make mistakes!- and craft a fairly reasonable equivalent:
We have many program of the ENGLISHES langage!
In other words: three linguistic errors, and one formatting error in a 9-word heading.
Interestingly, the organization that blasts these e-mails out has a website, and I checked it. They use the same marketing hype there, but it has been edited and looks slightly better. Pity they haven’t thought of updating their marketing e-mails.
Now I have two unrelated questions, and your answers will be greatly appreciated:
1. Would you feel confident to buy some expensive software products in your language version, from a provider that crammed 4 errors in a 9-word heading?
2. And incidentally, would you feel confident to buy some expensive software from a provider that offered (for some) up to 95% discounts on the *standart* (their mistake, not mine) price?
If you value your foreign customers, how do you show it to them?
May 19th, 2008 at 10:51 am
yes yes yes
we all love the holiday photos where we’ve picked up the bad english translation on a sign or poster and we laugh and laugh. and we’ve all laughed too many times at my bad french – of which i now can’t speak at all and the world is a better place.
leave it all to the experts I say!! and that’s you Nadine xxc
charlie robinsons last blog post..
May 20th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
I hate when I see such little care taken with marketing materials and would immediately junk anything that made these many mistakes regardless of what it was selling.
June 4th, 2008 at 6:52 pm
Charlie and Katherine,
I can understand it when locals try to attract business by making an effort to speak the language of visitors. I find it less palatable when people with supposedly marketing skills are not even trying.