The flip side of 'English Only:' ignorance comes at a price

[NV1962]

Note: This item could, of course, be taken as a funny story of the 'man-bites-dog' variety. But it reminded me of the perils of cultural indifference and ignorance; corporate culture blinders come at a price.

In this case, it's also interesting to note that the 'news' is prompted by a revelation made by a Microsoft official at a conference in Glasgow. At least they took the backlash of grossly negligent carelessness as an opportunity to do something about it; in my personal experience here in Northern NV, I come across an awful lot of very careless and sloppy 'translations' (into Spanish) that deny and undo the goodwill originally sought with the effort of those translations.

As much as I disagree with the cultural myopia of 'English Only' aficionados, there's no excuse for disrespect. One can't insist on speaking 'proper English' while demonstrating disregard for other languages - even and especially when the bottom line is at stake.

How eight pixels cost Microsoft millions

By Jo Best
Special to CNET News.com
Story last modified August 19, 2004, 11:36 AM PDT

...

When coloring in 800,000 pixels on a map of India, Microsoft colored eight of them a different shade of green to represent the disputed Kashmiri territory. The difference in greens meant Kashmir was shown as non-Indian, and the product was promptly banned in India. Microsoft was left to recall all 200,000 copies of the offending Windows 95 operating system software to try and heal the diplomatic wounds. "It cost millions," Edwards said.

Another social blunder from Microsoft saw chanting of the Koran used as a soundtrack for a computer game and led to great offense to the Saudi Arabia government. The company later issued a new version of the game without the chanting, while keeping the previous editions in circulation because U.S. staff thought the slip wouldn't be spotted, but the Saudi government banned the game and demanded an apology. Microsoft then withdrew the game.

The software giant managed to further offend the Saudis by creating another game in which Muslim warriors turned churches into mosques. That game was also withdrawn.

Microsoft has also managed to upset women and entire countries. A Spanish-language version of Windows XP, destined for Latin American markets, asked users to select their gender between "not specified," "male" or "bitch," because of an unfortunate error in translation.

Microsoft has also seen its unfortunate style of diplomacy have an effect in Korea, Kurdistan, Uruguay and to China--where a cartographical dispute saw Chinese employees hauled in front of the government.

...

Source

[Goldom]

1. How do you even notice eight pixels colored one green

amongst another green? I've prolly got more broken pixels in my monitor, and those show up bright green...

[NV1962]

2. The same way you immediately spot a misspelling of your name

The Kashmiri issue is very sensitive to many Indians and Pakistani. Just as with the Macedonian flag issue with Greeks, or Spain with Basques.

Such a boo-boo is found very quickly. It's like the few pixels that mark the nation's capital; if Los Angeles is marked as such in a map of the US, it would immediately jump out at you, too.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

3. And people have the attitude that it really doesn't matter because it's

"just foreigners" or "just a foreign language."

I once saw a boutique type store that was decorated in an Asian motif, and I noticed that the Chinese characters on the window display were backwards. When I told the store owner about it, she responded with my least favorite expression of modern times, "Whatever."

One of my tasks with first-year language students was to inform them that not everyone thinks or lives like Middle Americans, nor do they necessarily want to.

It was a shock to the average college freshman to learn that Japanese universities don't have fraternities and sororities, that Japanese can't drive until they're 18, and that most Japanese houses do not have anything that an American would call a "front lawn."

[tomfodw]

4. I'm sure all of that...

...would be a shock to George W. Bush, too. No fraternities? No way! Next you're going to try to tell me that Japanese college boys don't drink till they barf and kill half their remaining brain cells.