Dunglish

This wonderful bit of Dunglish from yesterday’s Dutch newspaper DAG was used to illustrate how bad Dutch managers are at speaking English properly, according to a Mr Kruithof over at the ITA Talencentrum (= marketing ploy). He actually goes on about how much they also suck at French and German. Of course, he has courses to remedy all of this and I just have this free blog I like to share with you.

For the non-Dutch inclined, this means “we use our own gas” and in Dutch, the idea is to say “gas from our own country”. When you’re a smart-ass manager who drives a dark blue Opel lease car and wears the same non-descript suit the entire week, you translate things literally and sound like a hick.

Read the rest of this shameless self-promotion right there (in Dutch).

This wonderful company is 0 for 2. ‘Inworp’ is just not an insertion – they mean ‘bigger coins’. This sentence needs a face-lift (a higher one).

Alternatives off the top of my coffee break: exact change not required, no change given.

‘No change given’ usually implies that a vending machine takes all coins and does not give change.
And there’s often a picture of the coins that are accepted like the Dutch train ticket vending machines have.

But why keep it simple when you can make it wordy? And I refuse to correct the sentence.

(Photo: Yuri)

The Dunglish translation does fit! This is much sloppier than usual. As if the company couldn’t afford it. This is just plain bad.

The “at the employees” is really disturbing. Maybe because it implies that the employees are a place and that sounds more like something you’d get from a coffee shop.

Luckily for you, I have more of those coming up!

(Photo: Yuri)