Wednesday, January 27, 2016

Wednesday Wordage...utterly lost in translation

I think there are two requirements for the written instruction sheets that come with new plumbing or HVAC bits or farm implements.

1.  The instructions must be translated from another language.  If the product was made in an Anglophone country, it must either use unfamiliar idioms or be translated into a non-Indo-European language and then translated back.

2.  The instructions must specify at least one topological impossibility or make reference to a non-existent part that exists in a non-integral dimension.

3.  There must be a part included in the bag of bits that is not mentioned anywhere in the instruction sheet.  (An exception--you can see a reference to it in the Finnish instructions, but nowhere else.)

I seem to have run into all of these rules today.

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