Dunglish

OK, it could be worse, but the big bad Dutch phone company has every resource imaginable at its disposal to crank out proper English for tourists at the Netherlands’ Schiphol Airport. We’ve talked about this before, big corporations not understanding the difference between adverbs and adjectives, as they are written the same way in Dutch.

Nevertheless, this is sloppy and there’s no excuse this time.

Suggestions:
- Getting online is simple and easy!
- Get online simply and easily!

And the rest: That nasty Dutch habit of writing 3,- (no hyphens in English, it’s totally useless, just € 3 will do, we know there are no cents) and then the twisted sentence afterwards with no cause and effect, known as the ‘missing link’). It should read ‘To purchase time online with your credit card, just click the top button’.

Shame on you, expensive monopolistic Dutch phone company!

(Photo: Jeroen)

I know first hand what it’s like to try and translate Dutch names and concepts into English, but the result here is just Dunglish, as pointed out by Noor whose Dunglish radar went off when reading this.

“Whoever chooses the overnight in Gouda can choose from different possibilities.”

You can choose to read the rest or not. The VVV, (Dutch tourist board) should really make it a priority to communicate properly to the non-Dutch tourist segment and not churn out nonsense like this. There’s a crisis, you need tourists, time to improve the website, people! Cheese fail!

(Link: vvgouda.nl, Tip: Noor)