"Furthermore, the survey revealed that attendees were very satisfied with the amount of sessions offered in the fields of systems and technology" - report in tcworld, the trade journal of tekom, the German professional association for technical communication and Information-Development

A bit embarrassing this one. tekom is a sister organisation of my trade body, the ISTC. In the very same issue of its magazine, a contributor explains the importance of not only translating the words, but also the meaning and culture, of a text.

A native English speaker will sense (if not knowing why) that amount of sessions is wrong, because amount refers to a measurable quantity of something (like 100 grams of sand or  2 litres of water), not an integer number of discrete things (like six buckets of water).

I have mentioned before that it is unwise, if one wishes to be taken seriously, to rely on DIY translations without using the services of a native speaker to -  at least - proof a translation. I might have hoped that an organisation of professional writers would do the same!

Another in a series of words that often get mistaken.

"The carrot to compliment this stick is that ..." - Big Issue article on ID cards, March 17-23, 2008

The carrot actually complements the stick.

And a new example with slightly different usage just in on 14/04:

"If you’re a fan of Neue Helvetica, we invite you to take a look at Nimbus Sans Novus™. ... The families are large and complete. However, the Nimbus Sans Novus character sets include a compliment of Eastern European characters." - FontHaus mailing

Here, the set includes a complement of Eastern European characters.

A compliment is praise - and complimentary describes something nice said or written about something or someone. (Or something given free - for some reason I don't really understand. "A complimentary cup of coffee" presumably says nice things about you whilst you are drinking it!)

To complement is to add to, or to make something whole or more complete. Complementary describes something adding to, completing, or going well with, another.

First in a series of words that often get mistaken.

Heard on The Food Programme (Radio 4) yesterday:

"We are being extolled to sprinkle salt on our food" - Simon Parkes

No we aren't - we are being exhorted. You extol the virtues of something you like; you exhort people to do something.

"coreldraw graphics suite 12 - 49    cakewalk project 5 - 59    longtion autorun pro enterprise 12 - 39    autodesk autocad electrical 2006 - 99    microsoft sql server developer edition 2005 - 69 symantec antivirus corporate 10 - 29 adobe photoshop cs3 extended - 89 ulead photoimpact 12 - 79 ^ type ^getsoftdiscount .com^ in Internet Exp!orer Erase ^ before you type in Internet Exp!orer ^ " - from a spam message received today

Given the cluelessness of the average surfer, does this silly spammer actually think anyone will bother to follow these tortuous pidgin instructions? After one has deciphered what the message is about (it was all mixed up with spurious blather to defeat Bayesian analysis), one is then expected to copy and paste part of the message to get to the site, remembering to correct the syntax error (space) in the URL on the way. All this to buy some pirated software from a place with no street address? Puh-leease.

The server is in Oz, and the domain belongs to some geezer in Dubai. I wouldn't buy a used camel off him, I have to say.

They even seem to have stolen their mission statement from someone else entirely.

"Our Mission
To deliver superior software products and services that empower our partners and customers to dramatically improve their development, deployment, integration and management of quality applications worldwide.

Our Team
We employ only the best professionals. Our development team has collected great analysts and programmers each having degrees in areas of responsibility as well as 3 to 10 years of professional experience. We are happy to embody our inventive ideas into optimal solutions for our customers using the most relevant information technologies. "

Seen at Morrison's supermarket in Bridport, on the Vacancies board:

Oven Fresh Manager

Frozen Assistant

"An attractive ground floor studio apartment located in the town centre and comprising large studio room with marble fireplace fitted kitchen, separate bathroom, high ceilings, and close to all shops, pubes, cafes and the beach" - Ad from last week's The View From Bridport (free paper)

The web site version doesn't commit the same mistake, but the gremlin was obviously in action again:

"A spacious gound floor period studio flat offered in good decoartive order throughout, retaining many original features with high ceilings and marble fireplace. Located in Lyme Regis town centre, close to the beach and all of it's local amenities to include shops, pubs, restaurants, theatre and cinema. Early viewings advised!"

'To include' makes it sound like Lyme is a building site that will eventually have facilities - which is not the case, I hasten to add.

Where do they find these ignoramuses, I wonder?

is a press release of fascinating ghastliness.

"Lingerie Luminaries Agent Provocateur have more or less single handedly transformed the attitude to covering the female form in exactly the correct fashion to empower the wearer and cause a perpendicular attitude in the voyeur. But what to show and what to shroud?

"Currently spread eagle across the walls of the Agent Provocateur in Stuttgart, Berlin and Leeds, Paper Voyeur wallpaper by DED."

Whatever Nik Daughtry* is, he or she should be ashamed of such trashy and ignorant copy. It combines grisly coyness about sex with a heavy handed link between two disparate subjects, plus incomprehensibility and a sprinkling of grammatical and punctuation errors to get us through to the end.

For wallpaper, there's MasterCard. But copy like this? Priceless.

The press release

* All you need to know about Daughtrys - pretentious, moi?