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Pick-finder? Check Out These Instructions...

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(@chris-c)
Famed Member
Joined: 19 years ago
Posts: 3454
Topic starter  

Possible Gadget for Finding Lost Picks?

Hi all,

Last week my son returned from a local fair with a ‘Show bag' containing the usual selection of chocolate bars and assorted cheap crap. It included a small LED light torch, about the size of my thumb, which he didn't want. It looked just the thing to keep handy for peering into guitar bodies looking for hard to read serial numbers and lost picks, etc - or investigating the innards of an amp at short notice. So I tried it out...

Naturally, it didn't work when I removed it from the packaging. So I took it apart and reassembled it in the correct order, instead of the wrong way round favoured by the factory. It then worked, and produced a fairly feeble but still usable beam of white light (white only). Then I decided to read the instructions.....

I'd like to share them with you, in case anybody has the slightest idea what any of it means. It's called a ‘LIGHTHIGT LED' (I think they might have been shooting for ‘HIGHLIGHT LED', but hey, not too bad a miss. Here's the rest:

Clearly this thing has hidden talents.

So if you have been hunting high and low for a “Taste housing LOGO”, or urgently need to “purple colour examine currency” then at least you know where to look now... :|

Cheers,

Chris


   
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 KR2
(@kr2)
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Joined: 17 years ago
Posts: 2717
 

1) Adopt to exceed high LED. Lamplight divides into: white, blue, green. Bonus, yellow orange, and purple colour examine currency.
Also examine head. If you buy this, you crazy. No get money back.
2) Choose high capacity to deduct type battery. CR2016X2 AG10X3
We origin with cheap battery. No work so good.
3) Taste housing LOGO. Can print, it is to promote sell, the best option of advertising.
Grasp product by handle and shake not sick to mess contents. Press reset button to cancel.

KR2

It's the rock that gives the stream its music . . . and the stream that gives the rock its roll.


   
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(@chris-c)
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Joined: 19 years ago
Posts: 3454
Topic starter  

Thanks Ken, I felt sure you'd be able to translate for me. :wink:


   
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(@rparker)
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Joined: 20 years ago
Posts: 5480
 

My head spun off. Took me 20 minutes to get back on. :evil:

Roy
"I wonder if a composer ever intentionally composed a piece that was physically impossible to play and stuck it away to be found years later after his death, knowing it would forever drive perfectionist musicians crazy." - George Carlin


   
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(@alangreen)
Member
Joined: 22 years ago
Posts: 5342
 

Excellent. Not since the days of CB radio hitting the UK and the instruction book telling me to "press the button to deliver your massage" have I laughed so much about instructions in Chinese English

A :lol: :lol: :lol:

"Be good at what you can do" - Fingerbanger"
I have always felt that it is better to do what is beautiful than what is 'right'" - Eliot Fisk
Wedding music and guitar lessons in Essex. Listen at: http://www.rollmopmusic.co.uk


   
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(@unimogbert)
Estimable Member
Joined: 16 years ago
Posts: 174
 

Well, if you had to write instructions in Chinese, the result might be hilarious too.

I tried to learn Japanese when doing some business trips to Japan. Was an interesting challenge.

After exposure to the language structure seeing the english words "Tasty Ride" on a scooter in Tokyo actually made sense!

"He is Good Man and Aspiring" - seen on the back of a leather jacket.

Then again, you'd think they could find someone like an English major or a spy to proof read the instructions before printing.....

Unimogbert
(indeterminate, er, intermediate fingerstyle acoustic)


   
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(@gnease)
Illustrious Member
Joined: 20 years ago
Posts: 5038
 

yeah -- these are direct translations of words. we often see them in low bidder "technical" documentation. I like Taste Housing Logo, which probably means Choice of Housing Logo ... and we all know ya can't argue about taste: it is what it is -- lick away. that's up there with the infamous

tapping lightly the rodent against the pane which came from click the mouse in the window

-=tension & release=-


   
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(@frankyl)
Eminent Member
Joined: 16 years ago
Posts: 44
 

Well, if you had to write instructions in Chinese, the result might be hilarious too.
Absolutely. Shoot, it wouldn't need to be something as different as Chinese. I've studied some French, with some linguistic roots in common with English, and I would fully expect that my translation of anything would be hilarious to a native French speaker. I would also expect them to laugh at it and show it to others for humor.

Are they suggesting that the purple color looks money, baby? A Swingers reference out of China?


   
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(@gnease)
Illustrious Member
Joined: 20 years ago
Posts: 5038
 

Well, if you had to write instructions in Chinese, the result might be hilarious too.

I tried to learn Japanese when doing some business trips to Japan. Was an interesting challenge.

After exposure to the language structure seeing the english words "Tasty Ride" on a scooter in Tokyo actually made sense!

"He is Good Man and Aspiring" - seen on the back of a leather jacket.

Then again, you'd think they could find someone like an English major or a spy to proof read the instructions before printing.....

... and from brief lessons and informal coaching over the years, Japanese seems a lot easier than Mandarin

-=tension & release=-


   
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(@greybeard)
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Joined: 21 years ago
Posts: 5840
 

A Italian restaurant in Berlin had a menu full of bad translation. The one that I remember best was for Penne al Arrabiata - "Pasta tubes with an angry sauce"!!

I started with nothing - and I've still got most of it left.
Did you know that the word "gullible" is not in any dictionary?
Greybeard's Pages
My Articles & Reviews on GN


   
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(@unimogbert)
Estimable Member
Joined: 16 years ago
Posts: 174
 

I wonder what color "bonus" refers to? Seems like people use LED colors to check for counterfeit money?

#3 seems to suggest that if you want to put your business logo on it for advertising purposes that can be done.

Pondering the words might take awhile but communication is possible.

Like Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra. (Star Trek obscure reference)

Unimogbert
(indeterminate, er, intermediate fingerstyle acoustic)


   
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(@kent_eh)
Noble Member
Joined: 18 years ago
Posts: 1882
 

I remember an article in an old Mix magazine, where the author was talking about his experiences working a travelling show in some interesting locales.
One show, where the opening band didn't speak any English, and he didn't speak whatever the local language was, a school boy was hired as a runner and translator.
During the show, the translator ran out to the mixing board and relayed a message from the stage:
The singer wants more fish in the box
:?: :?: :?:

Which, of course meant "more Bass in the monitor".
:lol:

I wrapped a newspaper ’round my head
So I looked like I was deep


   
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(@hyperborea)
Prominent Member
Joined: 17 years ago
Posts: 827
 

... and from brief lessons and informal coaching over the years, Japanese seems a lot easier than Mandarin

I think Chinese is harder from a making the right sounds perspective since it is a tonal language - the same sounds said in a different pitch (rising, lowering, high, and a sort of short fall followed by a rise) can mean different things or nothing at all. It is worse in other Chinese dialects (Cantonese has 6 tones).

However, I think Japanese is harder from a grammar perspective. Verbs have many, many conjugations for tense, intention, politeness level, etc. Chinese really has no conjugations. This is a much more difficult hurdle than the sounds issue which somebody learning the language will usually overcome early in the learning process. This grammar difficulty will continue to be a hurdle.

Pop music is about stealing pocket money from children. - Ian Anderson


   
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(@chris-c)
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Joined: 19 years ago
Posts: 3454
Topic starter  

Well, if you had to write instructions in Chinese, the result might be hilarious too.

Absolutely. Which is exactly why I wouldn't do it myself. When I travelled in France many years ago I regularly asked for a kilo of pepper when I meant pears. But I was just a visiting schoolboy, not a businessman trying to sell into a foreign market.

If I was trying to sell into China I could possibly get my nephew (who can read and write Chinese) to rough out some instructions, or ask a Chinese friend. But I'd be more likely to look for an appropriately experienced translator by contacting the department of trade, local universities, or through other businesses that had successfully found competent people. A few phone calls and/or emails should be able to track down somebody. It's not as if trade between China and the West is exactly new.

Given the well known dislike of 'losing face', I'm intrigued as to why such comprehensively garbled stuff as this still occurs. If your operation is sophisticated enough to manufacture, package and export electronic goods then why risk making yourself look cheap and second rate by not getting what were presumably three fairly straightforward points properly phrased? In the West we often find that the more mediocre the product the slicker and more professional the packaging needs to be to sell it. We even manage to have very successful industries selling things like bottled water - where the packaging pretty much IS the product, as the water inside is indistinguishable from rival brands.

I guess it reflects the sheer speed of expansion that's been happening there, and the push to keep moving into cheaper and cheaper locations. My relatively cosy Western notions about how quickly I can work my way up and down chains of connections are probably completely out of step with the reality of business life in many parts of China. It would be fascinating to visit one day and see it at first hand. A friend of mine works for a big engineering company who contracts some of their heavy plant building to Chinese companies and he has some hair-raising stories about expensive engineering blunders made simply because the instructions weren't understood, but - unlike here - the local workers weren't willing to say "Eh? What are you on about mate? Could you run through that again?" In that case, both sides are now having to try and rapidly adapt to the style and customs of the other. :)

Cheers,

Chris


   
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 Cat
(@cat)
Noble Member
Joined: 16 years ago
Posts: 1224
 

This is hilarious...but does it actually find picks?

Hey...how's THIS for an odd translation:

I've got a cattle bizz (with beefalo). In China I was booked at a seminar to explain the critter and to get genetics sales going full tilt over there. I spent an inordinate amount of time making a guitar backing to the slide show I was going to present so I was distracted enough to not really pay attention to every detail. I blanched when I read the topic they not only emblazoned on the program...but on the placard at the entryway to the exhibition hall:

"Australian shows how to make sex with strange cattle"

Lather reedickerus!

Cat

"Feel what you play...play what you feel!"


   
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