Dadaist user manuals - a call for submissions
'Stop before you whop'
Posted in Bootnotes, 9th January 2010 00:16 GMT
Watch Now : Virtual Machine Movement with Hyper-V
The eggnog has been drunk, the ornaments put away, the hangovers endured. Now it's time for you to dig through those users manuals for all that kit you received as a holiday goodie.
Problem: the manual was translated from its original Mandarin, Minangkabau, or Quenya by an autistic babelfish.
That was certainly our experience this season with an otherwise quite serviceable off-brand USB drive. You may have also run into risible manuals or marketing materials in your encounters with tech products - whether you just received something as a gift or have had it lying around for years.
If so, we'd love to see them.
But before we tell you how to share your user-manual, packaging, or instructions ludicrousness with us - and, of course, with your fellow Reg readers - let's take a look at a bit of the manual for that aforementioned USB drive:
The author apparently texts heavily - but u already know that
Need help? Just didk!
Never whop it without stopping
We hasten to add that our own personal language-translation skills would leave us helpless in China, Singapore, or Middle-Earth, but it does seem in this global economy the services of a proofreader might rate a bit higher on a manufacturer's priority list.
Show us what translational jaw-droppery you may have turned up. Scan your examples, take digital snapshots, tear out or photocopy them, or even just type 'em out - but although we trust you implicitly, we'd prefer some higher standard of evidence than your mere good word.
Then email your digital examples to us here, or send hard-copy to The Register, 116 New Montgomery - Suite 531, San Francisco CA 94105.
When a critical mass - morass? - has arrived, watch this space for a festival of linguistic ludicrousness. ®
Send corrections
The new Office Garage series:
Enabling efficient data center monitoring
