Categories: translation
Date: 03 March 2008 13:06:15
For about two and half years now, I have been translating for a particular company on a fairly regular basis. During this period, I have come to know the company quite well in some respects. I think they could find someone to write about their product in a slightly more exciting way - whoever writes for them uses the same old phrases over and over again which doesn't convince me (or possibly their customers) that they actually have anything new to sell.
I have also noticed that they seem to operate in an incredibly old-fashioned and bureaucratic way. I won't bore you with the details but I have been itching to go there and tell them that they could achieve the same outcome in about 10% of the time spent on admin, if only they would ditch their hammers, chisels and blocks of stone and use slightly more modern methods.
Well, shock, horror. Today's little translation was about how they would like their customers to receive news of their products by e-mail. Gentle reader, I simply was not prepared for this turn of events and nearly had to go and lie down for an hour or so. But, you will be pleased to know that I rallied sufficiently quickly to learn that they are not running the risk of killing off their clients with heart attacks by rushing into any rash new policy. No. Their customers are required to fill out a form giving their e-mail address which said customers should send by surface mail to the company. I suppose if everyone just emailed their email address to the company, the latter would have to organise some massive redundancy programme.
My 80-year old Dad is teaching himself to use a computer. He opted for a particular course because it promised a helpline with a real person to speak to every Thursday morning between 10 and 1 o'clock. (Bit of a bummer if you run into a problem at 2 pm on a Thursday as you'd have to wait a week to get it sorted out...). Yesterday, he told me that he had phoned the helpline last week for the first time, only to be told (by a real person) that the service had been discontinued but that if he was still stuck he could send an e-mail and someone would answer it.
The Pa-rent is just at "the turning on of the computer, opening a new document, operating a mouse and whacking a few keys on the keyboard" stage. He restrained himself from telling the person on the phone that if he were advanced enough to send an e-mail, he wouldn't have the problem he was currently encountering. I think I would have felt the need to point this out. Probably in words of one syllable. My Pa-rent is a gentleman....