Dunglish

This campaign gave me yet another reason not to trust a union or ever join one. Not only is the entire advert unclear to the targeted Dutch audience, but a slogan like “Power to the mensen met gezond verstand” (Power to the people with common sense), has a Dunglish mix that dumbs it right down.

Just what the Dutch need, another vague Dunglish slogan. Let us move pass this, comerades.

(Link and photo: reclamewereld.blog.nl)

Here’s just a funny name for a club and a Dunglish one at that. The venue is called ‘Wip Inn’, which is the Dunglish equivalent of “Pop inn”.

It really means “pop in” (verb) and uses the ‘inn’ to make it Dunglish, but ‘wip’ (from the Dutch verb ‘binnenwippen’), to ‘pop in’ and also if you push it (pardon the pun), well, ‘push in’, with an added casual sex connotation. ‘Wip’ could also refer to VIP, which is also a likely explanation. ‘Wippen’ also means ‘to seesaw’ (use your imagination), but it usually means to have sex (or any other similar euphemism).

Some of you may disagree or even explain this ‘joke’ better that I did – knock yourselves out.

I couldn’t leave this one alone, especially since I had a three hour and thirty minute train ride, and needed a break from my sudoku puzzle. If you read the actual Dutch article, you’ll see that the author has a problem with “beachbites” because it apparently gives the beach cafe in question a good reason to jack up the price of ordinary Dutch fingerfood. I couldn’t agree more. I also agree with the author when he says that it is logical that English be used instead of Dutch in the business world, since I am in that world and things are just much easier for everyone in English most of the time.

Just look at the article to see Aqua Leisure & Host be mentioned as news (late, but OK).

Language is not only threatened from outside, but from within as well – the “beachbites” are a perfect example of this. The Dutch people who came up with that believed that English was better than Dutch, as it will be perceived as more interesting and even of higher quality. The end product is Dutch though, so, yeah, weird.

I for one didn’t spend all these years learning Dutch to go and dumb it down with nonsense.

What a nice gadget, cradling the new iPhone that some of my friends keep going on about! The Dutch company Boynq has designed a new speaker/alarm clock called Wake Up for iPods (and apparently iPhones). The Wake Up can also recharge your iPod and iPhone (excellent point). Being curious and it being close to the holidays and all, I wanted to know more. I found more info, probably translated internally with no one to check it.

Highlights
“Pure Sound Supremacy is proven once again as besides being woken up by this masterpiece you can also give a great party as the incredible sound quality easily fills up your entire room.”

Say what? The copywriting does not do justice to the image.

“Compatible with all new iPods and iPhone*
*iPhone compatibility on models produced after January 1st”

iPhones, plural. On? Of what year? ‘Produced’ instead of manufactured or made is a literal Dutch translation, as is the first nasty sentence.

But it sure is pretty.

(Link: gizmodo)