Every year, I’m getting an invitation to an automotive-related conference organized by VDI, the main engineering organization in Germany. It’s written in English; well, it is written in something that probably wants to be English, but every year, its English is so bad that one immediately think that it must be a parody. Sadly, it is not. I simply can’t resist quoting the following highlights (quoting verbatim, and all spelling errors appear in the original):
- A member of the state legislature will speak on the subject of "Fright traffic and passanger services between different interests". I knew they were trafficking in all sorts of things, but not that they get scarier all the time. In particular now that those interests are involved…
- On the subject of visiting a Mercedes plant, the brochure recommends: "Please register for the visitation in the registration from attached." I assume it will be court-supervised while you are tied to the plant.
- And "As you would like to arrive individual, we will send you a route discreption with your documents." I’d rather not get that discreption while I’m in the process of liking my arriving individual.
Amazingly, it’s on the same level every year, and this is not a high school club, but an important conference held by the largest engineering organization in a G7 country in which it is virtually impossible to go through the school system without having to take a few years of English. Even the Word spell checker would catch most of those (I tried), and the English version does come with the German version of Word…