Categories: translation
Date: 13 February 2009 20:11:48
What a funny day!
In the middle of some very stressful, highly technical text on packaging ("oh, it's just general marketing - right up your street" said the project manager), I had to phone another client to clarify a point.
We had never actually spoken before and it turned out to be a very pleasant conversation with the added bonus of relieving some the stress of the packaging job. After I'd put the phone down, I reflected that my client must be having quite an easy day as he'd sounded so chirpy.
I returned to the packaging and at the end of the text I collapsed with laughter. They were talking about how this marvellous packing display with its eurohooks (which is apparently the name for those hooky things on which products such as batteries or boxes of tights [pantyhose] are hung) would be just the thing to attract the customer's attention. Except the phrase they'd used was more or less the equivalent of "catch your eye" and in German it is even more graphic as it is more like "poke you in the eye". I don't know if it was the stress - but I laughed and laughed until tears were running down my cheeks. I managed to rephrase the sentence and moved on... still laughing.
Later, I received an e-mail from the aforesaid client which said something along the lines of it having been nice to have a pleasant conversation in the middle of his very stressful day. He does a good line in sounding pleasant and cheerful in the midst of chaos; I hadn't guessed at all!
Curiously, one of the papers in my translation exams was on Laughter. At the time, stuffed in an exam room with about 60 others, sweating over some academic's thoughts on this phenomenon, I failed to see the joke. Perhaps the examiners were trying to warn us of something in our chosen profession - perhaps they have a sense of humour after all?
In other news: the boxes to the right of which I complained in a previous post are still there, but they seem to be fixed in position now, rather than following me line by line down the page. An improvement... perhaps by the next time I log on they'll have disappeared entirely. Here's hoping.