Categories: words, life, translation
Date: 14 September 2007 19:37:29
In a translation this week on a company's “Policy concerning the proper use of e-mail” (oh, yes; it's nothing but fun, fun, fun in my job) I was treated to grappling with such thorny issues of how and when to use e-mail as an appropriate form of communication. Some of the guidelines left me wondering what on earth the staff of this company had been doing with internal e-mails. The subtext seemed to imply that top management did not take kindly to their staff sending out unsanitised versions of e-mails about internal matters direct to their customers. A case of washing your dirty linen in public, I think.
One paragraph made me laugh out loud because staff were instructed not to simply add their comments to an e-mail and forward it to the next person because the original issue would get drowned at the bottom of this “E-Mail Wurst”. I knew exactly what the author meant with the image of a string of sausages (I wonder if the Italians would use an image with spaghetti?) but was at a loss for a while as to what to call it in English. In the end, and, as ever, under pressure of time, I decided on the less colourful “e-mail thread” (Boring, I know...)
Later, at Aqua Aerobics, the instructor told us to grab a sausage. (These brightly coloured buoyancy aids are also called woggles - but are nothing to do with the boy scout's version.) She made us swim to the deep end of the pool and do various exercises. I thought the sausages were supposed to help you keep your head above water but they seem to have some sort of affinity with e-mail messages. There is some cunning ploy afoot as they seem to be designed as an aid to drowning.