
Recently my son received a remote control helicopter for his birthday from his grandparents. It is a miniature helicopter meant to fly indoors and retains a charge that allows for about 20 minutes of flying time. It is truly an amazing toy that was obviously engineered and built by some very smart and talented people. A lot of thought and planning went into this little engineering marvel and, by judging by the devices performance, it is clear that the designers were working in their areas of strength.
However, they went one step too far....they obviously were WAY outside their areas of strength when they created the English version of the owners manual. Take a look at this excerpt taken word for word from the manual.
"In if the flight does not have the impetus to change the operating lever, but the helicopter still in airborne spun, by now might adjust in your hand on remote control's vernier adjustment knob, balanced does not spin until the helicopter."
Does this make any sense? What about this one....
"When the airplane tail presents the counter clockwise rotation, you may the clockwise rotation you in the hand the remote control vernier adjustment knob until well balanced."
I could go on with more examples but I believe my point has been made. After going to all the effort of making a great product, why not hire an English translator to finish off your product in a professional fashion. The toy owners would obviously not hire an English translator to design their remote control helicopter so why use an engineer to do translating work?
The lesson in this is to always make sure you are operating in your area of strength and when you have things that need to be completed in one of your areas of weakness, make sure that you find someone with a strength in this area to buttress your weakness.
PS. Here is another funny example from a sign I saw recently on a flight between Qatar and Dubai..."Be careful to store your bags so they don't fall off". This is a scary sign for someone to see after taking a seat on the airplane!