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Tuesday, January 09, 2007 :

Lost in translation

I was amused to get the following email from a translation agency that I engaged last year to translate documents from Spanish into English.

Estimado cliente:

Desde el Departamento de Calidad de Traducciones Políglota le queremos pedir que rellene una breve encuesta de satisfacción que no le llevará más de 4 minutos sobre los servicios de traducción e interpretación que ha recibido durante el año 2006.

Sus respuestas, observaciones y sugerencias nos serán de gran ayuda para mejorar la calidad de nuestros servicios.

Por supuesto, nos comprometemos a mantener la confidencialidad de los datos que nos facilite.

Para empezar la encuesta haga clic en el link que aparece más abajo o copie la dirección en su navegador.

De nuevo muchas gracias por ayudarnos a ser cada día un poco mejores.

Reciba un cordial saludo,

Departamento de Calidad de Traducciones Políglota

Although I can hazzard a rough guess at what this is on about (some kind of customer satisfaction survey), I am afraid that I could not resist a Basil–Fawlty–esque reply along the lines of “the reason I engaged your translation services was because I do not speak Spanish”.

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Comments:
It's OK. I can translate (although I'm not sure where Calidad actually is).

"Estimated clients:

The Calidad Department of Polish Translation has used its feet to produce a satisfactory shortcrust that leaves you sober for no more than 4 minutes. The translation of toilets and the interpretation of what they received is around 2006 anuses.

"Respect to suspenders", an observation which is sweet. Apart from when thinking of your gran. Our toilets in Calidad are helped by mussels.

For your safety, we will compromise and maintain confidentiality about any date we may arrange.

Commandos, emperors and witches should click on the link to copy the directions to get there.

Once again, thanks very much for helping us; please help yourself to mussels.

Have a dirty glass of squash as well,

The Calidad Department of Polish Translation”
 
Heh. It appears that the translation agency's response to my Basil Fawlty email has been simply to send me another copy of the email in Spanish, again requesting me to do whatever it was they were originally requesting me to do. Useless!
 
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