Many readers
I’ve been very busy lately, let the record show. But enough of that, here’s an interesting bit from a very popular Dutch magazine, a favourite for the whole family.
Highlights:
“Over 3 million regular readers” and further down, “almost 3 million readers”.
Interesting.
“An ideal way to show your fully product range.”
I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours.
January 31st, 2006 at 3:59 pm
“Over 3 million regular readers†and further down, “almost 3 million readersâ€.
That’s not really Dunglish as such, more … um, what’s it called again? Ah yes: LYING.
All the classic hallmarks of crap English translated by Dutch people are there: plurals with apostrophes, points as thousands separators/decimal commas, made-up compounds and my personal pet peeve, Dutch-style point form WITHOUT PREPOSITIONS (‘Profile readers Veronica Magazine 13 years and older’).
January 31st, 2006 at 4:07 pm
You are totally right!
I’m busy with a HUGE project until next week and have had no time to do anything!
January 31st, 2006 at 5:58 pm
Be thankful for small mercies. They actually pluralised the euro!!
“Price per ad 2006 in euros excl. tax”
February 1st, 2006 at 7:29 pm
But ‘euro’ isn’t supposed to be pluralized (debatable, but still). And ‘price per ad 2006 (…) excl. tax’ is still ghastly.
February 1st, 2006 at 11:53 pm
I was waiting until someone else mentioned it: euro is euro with no ‘s’, something many people still have to get used to. The European Union says it is so.
February 2nd, 2006 at 9:48 am
Call me a stick-in-the-mud, but I still prefer the traditional plural.
Apparently the EU have conceded that we can use both euro and euros:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro
February 2nd, 2006 at 9:57 am
Cool. But clients want singular 🙂
What I cannot stand is the spelling Euro, with a capital. No other currency needs a capital, but oddly enough, people capitalize the euro. My pet peeve!
February 2nd, 2006 at 3:15 pm
Re: Capitalizing ‘Euro’
I blame the Germans.
February 2nd, 2006 at 6:11 pm
Definitely not the cutesy ‘euri’ in any case!
February 2nd, 2006 at 6:20 pm
Many of the Eastern European countries say “evro” in their language, because the ‘u’ in Europe is a ‘v’. But you all knew that…
February 2nd, 2006 at 8:37 pm
I know the customer is always right (especially a Dutch one), but if we gave our clients what THEY wanted all the time, wouldn’t that be … er … Dunglish!!??
February 2nd, 2006 at 9:38 pm
You have to give them what they think they want 🙂
February 6th, 2006 at 6:53 pm
Nope. You have to give them something they never even thought about.
That’ll draw their attention away from what they actually wanted, which is (a) something you possibly (most probably!) don’t have and (b) you can always try to sell later 😉