Web Site Spelling Errors

if you're surfing the web and stop on sites with products from China you can expect massive errors...makes me assume the products are equally crappy

"Fishing Game. Includes four wets"

Aparently 'wets' means 'toy fishing poles'

Chinglish is so fun to read sometimes, by which I mean in the 'cheap toy isle' of the supermarket, not in technical manuals.

If I had to translate from English to a Chinese language, I wouldn't have a clue if it translated even close to what I intended.

If it was something important, wouldn't you find someone in possession of the necessary clues and have them proof read, before publishing/sending?

Yes, there are many, they show the level of effort on the part of the developer and the difference between blindly using a spell-checker and actually proof-reading for context, grammar, punctuation, and readability.

If you expect another human to read your work and understand your point, then you owe your reader the courtesy of ensuring that you understand it yourself by being the first one to read and comprehend it.

Really true.

This website only has an American spell checker and no grammar checks, the posts sometimes demonstrate both awful spelling and awful grammar.

Even my "British English" spellings are posted as being wrong quite often on CR4....I let them stay most days....

An online (also posted as wrong by CR4 spell checker) spell checker, even when used, has limited possibilities as well. I always excuse the non "first language English" people for bad grammar, but even they could try using the spell checker.....but they don't.

As to any English speakers here with awful spelling, why don't they use it?

As a hobby, for some years now, I occasionally translate Electronic reference Books on different electronic subjects into English and I really have to be careful with the translation wording, so that it makes sense in English.

There is NO software that can do it automatically. The results are always simply a way of making people laugh!! (or cry!!)

It all has to be done "by hand"......

You have started an interesting blog, thanks from me.

"As to any English speakers here with awful spelling, why don't they use it?"

I have been a life long spelling failure. Spell-check is only so good. What do others do when spell-check just can not recognize the word you are trying to use. There are times when I have to quit because I can not find a substitute word that can pass spell-check.

Part of my point is how can I take a business seriously when they don't even take their internet presence seriously? If I am reading a web site and find a spelling error, I immediately lose faith in that company. probably because I take the time to proof read most everything I type because I know I make mistakes with my fat fingers on a keyboard designed for a slender hand. My fingers really aren't fat, they're just numb from all the injuries I have to my shoulders and wrists and Carpal tunnel in both hands.

That is not an excuse because it only takes a minute to read the last thing I typed.

I think smarter tattoo artists are out of the question. Do they have spell check on tattoos?

Apparently it requires higher levels of any type of I., artificial or otherwise, than is in use today in many circumstances....as the picture you posted exemplifies.

Good one!!

It could be corrected quite easily though.....if he knew better!!!

I do see errors from time to time. The absolute worst thing online is the degree of illiteracy shown by some comments to blogs. I'm not sure I've seen too many without some type of grammatical error.

Along the same line, the user's manuals that have come with things I've bought were obviously not written by someone educated with English as a first language. It would seem that big companies could afford to hire an English speaking person to correct the manuals.

Even the hiring of an English speaking person will not always give the correct translation, especially with technical items. Unless the translator knows the facts or process and has some kind of experience in the field, as the old saying goes, "it loses a lot in the translation". As with a lot of things, the intent has to be translated, not just the words.

As for errors on web sites et al, I would put that down to the degradation of our educational system as not much emphasis is put on the first two R's of the old school ways. For those too young, reading, writing, arithmatic. Old school of readin, ritin and rithmatic.

Hubris.

I see many of these sites that are designed by the owner of the small company, and among them their seams two be a beleif that there work is above revue.

Sad, this... it is a poor reflection of their general competence (perhaps a correct reflection, perhaps not).

there or their ?

I've written to website owners when it's an egregious error. Some fix the error quickly and others don't. It does reflect some amount of care and concern about a company's image. Especially when they don't fix such issues quickly. Certainly makes me want to look elsewhere.

Another recent one ... yesterday .... from an Australian Tertiary R&D Group

"TRD trails show benefits

In early 2013, CRCMining developed an advanced Tight Radius Drilling (TRD) system for extracting methane gas from coal seams safely and cost-effectively."

Spell check would still miss "trails" instead of "trials"
Maybe as this was in an email newsletter and not in a website, it does not count?

Likewise, the ones I see are usually perfectly good words, just the wrong words. Spell check only knows that they are spelled correctly.

Correct.

I see them all the time in both the high school kid doing some "paid" web site development to the extreme of the corporate giants with more IT personnel than they know what to do with. Difference why corp giants are usually fewer is they have enough personnel to have "human spell checkers" review everything before it goes on the web. Just like the book and newspapers publishers have proof readers, although they seem to have many problems with it.

I don't want to be the first one to throw the stone because as many of you have noticed my spelling and my keyboarding are terrible. CR4 spell checker misses many so it is little help. The best way I have found is to write the message in a word processor, spell check it there, copy it from the word processor and paste it into the final place for its use. Unfortunately, that takes time so I rush things and miss spelling error that go through.

Come on now, I ain't perfect lik sume geuy from Germany, I'ze America!

Good Luck, Old Salt

I recently received a message from Alibaba telling me about two new swamp coolers that were available. At the end of the email message it said, " Thank you for your continued interest and good luck in your Bussiness. I sent an email to Alibaba asking them what is the definition of the word, " Bussiness" ? Alibaba's Director of International Marketing sent me back a message where she asked me, " What type of Bussiness are you involved in ? "

Greyhound, maybe?

When you submit a post here, you get a message that you are now subscribed to the thread, followed by this:

"There is more to life than increasing its speed." -- Ghandi

As a test case, let us observe how long it takes to get that fixed.

Get what fixed?

Ghandi; it's Gandhi.

AH! I was looking at the quotation!

The referenced thing to be fixed is Gandhi....though, he has been dead for more than 65 years now, so it may take a while to fix.

....and now after posting I notice the answer was provided a few minutes earlier.

.

I wonder if those quotes are from some third party as part of some other service or maybe a stand alone subscription? I noticed the Lance Armstrong quotes about determination and persistence being the key, stayed up a long time after the info surfaced that there was another key to his success.

This problem will never entirely go away and may even get worse. As an example: I do a lot of reading books from several well known authors, real professionals, and I still find grammatical errors and sometimes spelling errors or sometimes the wrong word is used. And these books are probably reviewed and edited by several very capable people and they still miss things when they are looking for them.

You are so right.

Many years ago, I read a few Guenther Grass (a good German author who died recently) novels in English, which were translated by some high level German Professor of English (if I remembered correctly) and he made many errors!!!

He was not following the single most important rule of translating, always INTO your own language, never the other way!!!

He was not following the single most important rule of translating, always INTO your own language, never the other way!!!
Andy,I'm not sure I follow what you mean by that statement. Please explain.

No matter how fluent you are in another language, you always understand more nuances of your own first language, especially in technical writing.

Almost immediately after learning Spanish (50 years ago), I was thrust into a situation where I had to write technical instructions in Spanish. It was extremely difficult!

I understand enough of some other languages to get the general idea when reading a manual, but I clearly could not begin to write anything significant in those other languages.

I totally agree with Andy; at least the final proof reader should be reading in his own first language.

Correct, but I have seen too many companies try and miss that out, the results were disastrous....or funny, or both......but NEVER correct.....

Also, using cheap translators, someone who is say not technically capable within the subject of the manual, make disastrous translations too, even if they had the right first language.

So you get perfect grammar, perfect spelling, but still the wrong infos and wrong words......

When I translate for particular product, I ask for a free sample to play with, sometimes I find firmware errors, sometimes it simply does not work in any language, sometimes its really good, sometimes I am allowed to keep it!!

Explanation.

I was born in Great Britain.

My primary language is English.

I translate from French to English (seldom nowadays) and from German to English only, never the other way around.

That is translating INTO your own language.

Hopefully I have explained well enough for you.....

Andy,

Thank you. I wasn't sure how you meant it and you explained it perfectly for my sometimes over analytical brain.

I see that as my error, rather than yours.

I see it as my job (all of our jobs here) to write in such a way, the first time, that the meaning is 100% clear. It wasn't, sorry!

Thanks for drawing my attention to it!!

Have a great day.

My wife use to freelance proofreading for a well known publishing firm and one of her main complaints were that the technical writers were the worst English writers of all time. They constantly used the wrong words, and out of context throughout the manuscripts. The fact that she speaks 5 languages helped as sometimes it was a language difference that was part of the problem. With her language skills it helped when she knew the base language of the author, it gave her a frame of reference to look to for help in figuring out what they were trying to say.One of her favorite situations was she was doing an administrative assistance job for the Pan Am games back in the late 80's or early 90's. All of the rule books were sent to the administrative offices for that series of games to be held here in the US. One of the Equestrian coaches was trying to pick up a set of rules for their event, He started laughing so hard he could not get a word out to explain what was wrong so my wife looked at what he was reading and what did she find? The rules had been translated by some one whom spoke Spanish directly from English to Spanish. Everything was out of context. She went on a terror raid to get it fixed and new rule books published in time for the games. I'm glad I was not married to her at the time as I could see what would have occurred if you crossed that red head on a mission. Very scary thought.

I hate to say this, but your wife would have a field day with your post.

Do you regard grammatical errors the same as typographical errors?

Are you asking a particular person or "at" a particular post?

If yes, you should make that clear.....Its usually best to "Reply" to a particular post for clarity....or phrase it differently to address all.....whatever.....

In the punctuation picture .... consider the use of the 'comma' or lack of and how meanings can change.

The Australian wombat eats roots and leaves.

The, Australian, wombat ,eats, roots, and, leaves.
I don't get it?

Probably like referring to someone in a strictly physical relationship as a Panda.....ya know, 'eats shoots and leaves'.

.

Commas are vital. A matter of life and death, at times.

'Let's eat, grandpa!'

Vs.

'Let's eat grandpa!'

LOL!!! funny.

Unless you're Grandpa?

Only the first and last commas are necessarily wrong.

--Editor Crankshaft

LOL

But also completely true....many thanks.

I think the same. (Too) many here, with English as a first language, really need to go back to school....

How anyone can write "Your" instead of "You're", a common mistake made here....you only need to say it out loud....

I know my English, both written and spoken, is not what it was, I have to think more while writing!! Getting old!!

Re-reading is naturally a requirement, the CR4 spell checker usually underlines my errors, I just have to check/correct those words again, quite simple to do really!!

I don't know about UK and EU pronunciation of English, but here in the US (at least in California), spoken English has gotten lazy just like the written language. Many (possibly most) people pronounce "you're" exactly the same way they pronounce "your". If they don't distinguish between the two words in spoken language, it's not difficult to understand why they don't distinguish between them in written language, but I'm still offended!

Similarly, 'probably' often looses a 'b' and sometimes both 'b's in pronunciation.

.

'Nutter' is one of my favorites, as in 'that first roll was so screwed up, we had to get a whole nuther roll and start again'.

English as an evolving language. See notes below from an Alastair Kane.

"Creative writing

From Shakespeare to Edward Lear or Lewis Carroll, English writers have always been liberal in creating their own words and shaping language to suit their own imaginative needs. Though sometimes considered nonsense terms, if you're looking at the evolution of language, creativity is responsible for much of English's evolution - slang and contemporary colloquialisms are constantly changing the way we speak.

Today, with a world so interconnected and multicultural, any language is accessible at the touch of a button. It is this technology and diversity which is shaping the English language of the future - and in every form. When was the last time you physically put pen to paper and wrote? Aided by autocorrect, shortened by texting, and homogenised with American spelling, modern, everyday, informal English already acts quite differently to recent former versions.

The future

Having evolved to the heights of linguistic dominance, as social and political spheres merge into one melting pot 'global community' it is likely that English will remain dominant, though will never remain a static creature. Changing as a result of technology and geography, spelling homogenisation to improve consistency may occur and judging from the past, multicultural influences are sure to have major impacts - perhaps English will blend with Mandarin to form one supreme global language? - we will only find out in another thousand years!"

GOOGLE wanted to be called GOOGOL but mis -spelled their own name....

Did not matter. they all got filthy rich