I read with interest a flyer yesterday for a plastic card printer: very obviously translated into English by someone who doesn’t speak English all that well!

And today, another one… Mel was creating some hand-made invitations for a client, and the instructions and information on the back of a new packet of “Glue tape” (like the liquid paper that comes in tape form, but glue!) were quite amusing. The product is made in Korea.

Here’s a few gems from the packaging:

Under “Special Feature”

5. The front tip of the tape as the figure works good even benting part glue

Not quite sure what that was intended to mean! Maybe it’s to do with applying glue on curved lines?

Under “Glue Tape Usage”

1. Gluing envelope, postage and receipt.

2. Editing, data arrangement and tentative plan.

3. Paper fold, gift packaging and environment decoration.

4. Put memo temporary.

We could figure most of that out (number 2 probably means creating a temporary layout; not sure about the “environment decoration” for number 3 though).

The Glue Tape works great… just glad we don’t need to rely on the English instructions on the back!

It makes me wonder too at the value of automatic online translation services. Have you ever tried to type something (in our case, in English) and then translate it via an online service, AND THEN translate it back into the original language? Every time I do that the end result in English is nothing like what I wrote originally.

Back to the Glue Tape. Luckily the graphic design pictures used on the packaging show any necessary instructions, without the need to rely on the accompanying text. That highlights the importance of both making the product user-friendly and using graphics in a universal way to communicate.

We have assisted clients in the past with translating instructions on product information flyers — or, more specifically, re-writing instructions that were translated into English in a similar way by the product manufacturer.

We’ve just wrapped up the 2006 Harvey World Travel Victoria and Tasmania state conference.

I was on Sunday’s programme, delivering a local marketing presentation to a closed-session of owner/managers. Firstly, thanks for the positive feedback from the shops we’ve spoken to since yesterday!

It has also been great to have a good response to the content in our presentation, and the orders and enquiries on “day 1 post-conference” have been steadily growing.
Aside from preparing our own PowerPoint presentation and participant workbook, we also produced a range of conference materials for this conference, including:

• Conference compendiums
• Workbooks for another closed session
• Lecturn Poster
• 2 DVDs for the Opening Session
• Themed PowerPoint templates
• Special thank you cards
• Full colour name badges for all participants
• Award certificates for the Gala Ball
• MS Word invitation template for the Gala Ball
• MS Word update template for delegate communication pre-conference
• Special PowerPoint marketing update presentation

Our workload this week is back to regular levels now the main conference work has been finished. We’re off to Perth and Brisbane to deliver marketing presentations in June, and are looking forward to being at those events and meeting more of our clients!

Why is it that so many printers spell the word stationery incorrectly? I’m not the world’s best English authority, but “stationary” is so obviously wrong and noticeable in this profession!

Shouldn’t printers know better? They print stationery; they should know. So who proof-reads their work?

Here’s the easy memory-link/connection I’ve always made to work out whether it’s the printed stuff or the standing in one place version:

• Stationery — with an “e” in it — think of “(E) education” (paper, writing materials)
• Stationary — with an “a” in it — think of “(A) at one spot” (not moving)

We purchased a set of DVDs for a gift this past week and got home to discover the price label was UNDER the outside shrink wrap.

It’s clear in this case the store has not thought about the transaction from the customer’s point of view!

DVDs would be a common gift item so it’s not as though you could reason that 99% of purchases are for non-gift purposes. I’d hazard to guess, but perhaps a quarter or third of such purchases would end up as gifts.

So we have the dilemma of taking off the shrink wrap to remove the price tag — which then lowers the value of the gift for the receipient, as it looks like it has been opened (and is probably not permitted in the store’s return policy, although I don’t that policy would stand up to scrutiny). OR we can just cover the price tag to leave the shrink wrap in place (which means the price is still under the shrink wrap and could be viewable later.

(As it was a gift for my grandmother, we opted to leave on the shrink wrap, just in case she already had the four DVDs we had selected).

Maybe having the price tag under the shrink wrap prevents customers from trying to change or alter the tag, and is a security measure — but there are other obvious options (barcode scanning for one, tamper-proof tags as well) that would better suit a gift-giving purpose.

This strategy also makes it more difficult for staff to change the price should that be required (although mostly a second tag should be added for a price reduction to show the savings value and that the price was originally higher).

Having a full “walk-through” of the transaction would have revealed the issue and help improve the store’s overall perception.