In an effort to fully embrace the holiday spirit of world peace and cooperation, we here at VideoHelper decided to send our various holiday wishes to all of our clients in their native tongues, so we used a free, automated webpage-based service to translate all of our greetings and custom-written letters into more than 45 different languages.
However, when we then took the translated messages and used the same service to translate them back to English we found that perhaps we should have used an actual human translator for many of the languages.
For example, we sincerely apologize to our friends in Paraguay when we invited them to enjoy the holiday by “tying one on.” Because, when translated and translated back, it became “strapping one on,” which changed our intent considerably.
We also give our sincerest apologies to our representatives in Bratislava, whose letter intended to thank them for their intense manual labor -- and not for the “hand jobs” as mistranslated.
We also wish to remind Taiwan that we suggested talking to them more frequently – and not for, as our translated letter requested, “more frequent intercourse.”
Even the letters that were translated accurately have resulted in awkwardness. When we offered to send free jackets to clients who replied, our offer was met with disgust. It was then discovered that the term “windbreaker” is exclusively American.
We also sincerely regret our use of American colloquial phrases like “picking one’s brain,” “eye candy” and “lip service.”
The only thing that has gone right this holiday season is the release of our newest disc VH DISC 32: POP SMEAR. This disc is a musical roadmap of popular music genres (Rap, Rock, Garage, Punk, MexTech, Country, etc) and not-so-popular, made-up ones like Twenty-Chromosome Country, Mexi-Funk, Rockanova, Aggro-Happy and Irritating Loud Repeating Note.
The disc is divided into three sections: POP/UPBEAT/FUN/FUNKY, WARM/EMOTIONAL/LIGHTER and STREET/GRITTY/HIP-HOP.
We’d go into specifics, but our legal department forbids any more direct client contact.
