This post is about one of my 45-second pitches at my BNI Chapter, BNI City Business. You can read the introduction to this collection here.

Back after my Covid-19 week off, and returning to my Lost In Translation series (10 March, 2023).

A BNI chapter member was of the opinion that I was belittling people who were not native English speakers with my Lost In Translation slides. I have deliberately selected commercial examples where the text needed to be translated – a situation where a level of professional translation should be expected. These are not examples from ESL students, where their attempts should be encouraged.

Which ties into the theme of this slide. I advocate to my clients that they need to be proficient in how something works before they attempt a variation that is outside the ‘rules.’ This type of informed experimentation can give rise to new combinations and innovative breakthroughs. While naive rule-breaking can also have the same result, it more often ends in failure, accompanied with ‘I didn’t read the manual.’

This washing label amused me, and ties in to my message this week very well. So many errors! I’m not even sure what they mean by ‘In Coleslaw.’ I think the symbol is meant to mean ‘Line Dry in Shade.’

I was also amused by the use of Pinyin text on the label. I’m not sure who this is for. Mandarin speakers would prefer Chinese characters, and non-Mandarin speakers would prefer anything else!