Watch Your Language

Geoff Hart posted this to the Tech Writing mailing list earlier this week (and reproduced here with his kind permission):

From the March 2005 Consumer Reports, which displayed a photo of the French text on the "care" label attached to a handbag produced by the Tom Bihn company in the U.S.:

[English label not shown but described by CR]: Hand-wash in warm water with gentle soap, and hang to dry. Do not use bleach. Do not machine-dry.

French: Laver à la main à l'eau tiède, savon doux, étendre pour secher. Ne pas javelliser. Ne pas secher à la machine. Nous sommes désolés que notre président soit un idiot. Nous n'avons pas voté pour lui.

For those whose French is of the "plume de ma tante" variety, the extra French text says: "We're sorry that our president is an idiot. We didn't vote for him."

Please let's not turn this into a political discussion. The lesson for those of us who do or review translation is that someone needs to check the translations carefully. In this case, the extra French seems to have been an intentional political comment by the manufacturer, but I've seen similarly egregious errors that crept in when nobody did the QA.

Geoff also pointed out that the company itself recognized the, um, interest this little item would provoke.