I am in the middle of a great book right now called The Mother Tongue.  It’s about the origin of the English language.  In the early pages it pokes a little fun at the attempt some companies who have a false mastery of the language.

I seem to buy a lot of these products and they are hilarious!  I’ve been meaning to post this image for a while!  It’s the back of the box of my network cable tester.

Cable Tester Back

My favorite is the “Attention”, “Do not change it on your mind.”  I can’t even fathom what it’s trying to warn me against.  I’ve got a manual for my XO brand radio that is just as bad!  Most of the time you have no clue what it’s trying to tell you.  The Radio, by the way, is not much better.  The English on it is pretty simple, but there are large sections of the user interface that are not translated from Chinese! It’s also a pretty poor MP3 player which sucks because that is the feature I purchased the radio for.

Filed under: