Gskill: "too many works, too less memory?"

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taltamir

taltamir

Lifer
Mar 21, 2004
13,576
6
76
I noticed an AD by gskill here in this forum... it reads "too many works, too less memory?"
I find that hilarious, sad, pathetic, and downright criminal butchering of the english language. I must wonder, if this is unintentional engrish due to some engineer in china being told "make an ad in english in the next 2 hours" or did an actual advertising firm come up with this horror.
 
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Blain

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
23,643
3
81
Welcome to the world of the international forum.
English may not be the 1st language of members outside the USA, nor the 1st language of members inside the borders of the USA.

Such is life...
 
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A5

Diamond Member
Jun 9, 2000
4,902
5
81
Blain said:
Welcome to the world of the international forum.
English may not be the 1st language of members outside the USA, nor the 1st language of members inside the borders of the USA.

Such is life...
Click to expand...

But if you're going to bother writing an ad in English, you can pay a native speaker a few bucks for a 20 second proofread. Also, I'd wager that 90% of the people here are from the US or Canada.
 
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DukeN

Golden Member
Dec 12, 1999
1,422
0
76
A5 said:
But if you're going to bother writing an ad in English, you can pay a native speaker a few bucks for a 20 second proofread. Also, I'd wager that 90% of the people here are from the US or Canada.
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Doesn't mean everyone from the US or Canada has English as their primary language.
 
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alyarb

Platinum Member
Jan 25, 2009
2,425
0
76
No one is disputing what the official or proper language of the forums should be. The community here decided long ago that the language is English and we don't give nonnative speakers any hassle (but native ones? you bet) for sucking at it.

However, if you have a product you are marketing to a group of predominantly English-speaking North Americans, it is in YOUR best interest, not ours, that YOU speak OUR language so that we would notice that your ad, in addition to its racist commentary, is trying to tip us off that you make decent RAM modules.
 
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dawza

Senior member
Dec 31, 2005
921
0
76
I have always wondered just exactly why these companies (even giants like Asus) are not willing to hire a professional to edit their literature/ads. I can't imagine cost is an issue. How difficult would it be to inform the various divisions to forward all documents/ads/literature to person xyz for final editing before printing?

Just in case it is not obvious, I agree with alyarb on this issue, and it is something that has always bugged me. Grammatically accurate documents go a long way in conveying a sense of professionalism.
 
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DukeN

Golden Member
Dec 12, 1999
1,422
0
76
dawza said:
I have always wondered just exactly why these companies (even giants like Asus) are not willing to hire a professional to edit their literature/ads. I can't imagine cost is an issue. How difficult would it be to inform the various divisions to forward all documents/ads/literature to person xyz for final editing before printing?

Just in case it is not obvious, I agree with alyarb on this issue, and it is something that has always bugged me. Grammatically accurate documents go a long way in conveying a sense of professionalism.
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Agreed on the professionalism part, but a lot of manufacturers have razor thin margins and a lot of time "not shitty" is sufficient to them. Just having processes like an extra department to proofread all communications, etc could be a big cost burden to some organizations.
 
taltamir

taltamir

Lifer
Mar 21, 2004
13,576
6
76
I have little sympathy to the non native speaker status of a freaking ADVERTISEMENT.
this isn't some guy I am talking to and he makes grammatical errors because he is a non native speaker, this is an advertisement selling stuff to english speakers by a big company, and the best they can do is horribly mangle the language.

Speaking of ASUS, it was my experience that ASUS actually does get qualified english speakers, their engrish is nothing compared to gigabyte and MSI (my MSI mobo says "CoreCell The most extreme chip you ever needed" every time it boots up)
 
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Sahakiel

Golden Member
Oct 19, 2001
1,746
0
86
Finding a native bilingual speaker is hard enough. Finding one doing translations is even worse. Good luck finding a native bilingual who translates well.
Usually, one of two things happens: you find a native speaker of one language and translate to/from the other, or you find two native speakers and have them translate then fix on the other side. Neither solution actually provides a good translation. Either you get garbage on one end or you get an entirely different meaning on the other side.
Generally speaking, if you find advertisements with mangled writing, the reason is because the target market simply does not (or is assumed to not) provide enough revenue to make it worth their while. Once in a while, it's intentional. Professionalism doesn't even factor into it since your customers are not worth the effort.
 
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taltamir

taltamir

Lifer
Mar 21, 2004
13,576
6
76
why do they need a native bilingual person to make an ad?
they just need to hire a native speaker to make the ad to begin with.
 
n7

n7

Elite Member
Jan 4, 2004
21,281
4
81
Great skill in memory world!

Their translations make me LOL, so it's all good to me.
 
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Cattlegod

Diamond Member
May 22, 2001
8,687
1
0
probably intentional and it looks like it is working. i mean you even created a thread about it. how many other memory banner ads have you created a thread about to generate internet buzz?
 
BlueWeasel

BlueWeasel

Lifer
Jun 2, 2000
15,944
475
126
Reminds of the boot image on an old 939 MSI motherboard I had:

"CoreCell-Extreme Chip you’ve ever needed"

What?
 
EarthwormJim

EarthwormJim

Diamond Member
Oct 15, 2003
3,239
0
76
I honestly think that at this point Taiwanese companies do this on purpose as part of their image. Every single company comes out with some weird slogan that babelfish could do a better job at translating.

What's Asus' current one, "Rock Solid - Heart Touching." WTF does that even mean coming from a silicon manufacturer?

I do have to hand it to G.Skill, they know their to's, too's and two's...
 
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taltamir

taltamir

Lifer
Mar 21, 2004
13,576
6
76
EarthwormJim said:
I do have to hand it to G.Skill, they know their to's, too's and two's...
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good point. This is a very common error even for native speakers and they don't make it.
what really scares me, is that it just MIGHT be technically "correct" English.

Kinda like how saying bull (I think it was bull) 6 times in a row is actually a valid and correct English sentence.

Can an english major / professor chime in with their take on the sentence "too many works, too less memory"? is it as wrong as we think it is?
Because if not, then it is a strong indication that they really ARE doing it on purpose just to mess with us.
 
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Rubycon

Rubycon

Madame President
Aug 10, 2005
17,768
485
126
taltamir said:
so does mine :p



is this from somewhere specific? or did you make it up yourself? cause its hillarious
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Just came up with that as a twist from hearing the Soviet Russia jingle in OT for years. :biggrin:

I wish GS Kill would get their act together with releasing the 1916 firmware for their Falcon SSD product! I have a ton of them here that could use it since it adds Garbage Collection and all these are used in RAID.

http://www.gskill.us/forum/showthread.php?t=3551
 
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sxr7171

Diamond Member
Jun 21, 2002
5,079
40
91
A5 said:
But if you're going to bother writing an ad in English, you can pay a native speaker a few bucks for a 20 second proofread. Also, I'd wager that 90% of the people here are from the US or Canada.
Click to expand...

Well the quality of that English still exceeds what I see on the internet written by those Americans and Canadians whose first and only language is English. Do they teach English grammar in American schools and universities anymore? Kids are getting out of top tier universities with a tenuous grasp of written English. I've even met some, then I read their words. What I read boggled my mind.

As a society Americans in particular have no license to criticize any one else's English. (Mozilla spell check doesn't think that "else's" is a word but I bet some American was responsible for that - d'oh).

As for G.Skill it's not my problem what they choose to do with their advertising budget.
 
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sxr7171

Diamond Member
Jun 21, 2002
5,079
40
91
taltamir said:
good point. This is a very common error even for native speakers and they don't make it.
what really scares me, is that it just MIGHT be technically "correct" English.

Kinda like how saying bull (I think it was bull) 6 times in a row is actually a valid and correct English sentence.

Can an english major / professor chime in with their take on the sentence "too many works, too less memory"? is it as wrong as we think it is?
Because if not, then it is a strong indication that they really ARE doing it on purpose just to mess with us.
Click to expand...

I'm no English professor but I think you're right. There's really nothing wrong with the statement other than it being idiomatically jarring to American audiences.

"Too many works?" could just as well be asking if you have too many "works in progress" but Americans seem to prefer "Too much work?" as a question. I suspect maybe the English (yeah the ones after whom the language is named) might be more comfortable with the question being phrased that way. I'll let someone from England answer that.

"Too little memory?" explains itself.
 
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