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Yes, I totally agree with this. I spent weeks debugging some some unexpected behavior with a flash memory chip, only to learn that some crucial information was "explained" in one very cryptic sentence. It turns out the datasheet was originally written in Korean and the translated, poorly, into English.

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My favorite translation blip came from an Advantest calibration manual:

"Adjust [setting] until the sun shines most brightly upon the screen."

Fortunately, the setting did not have any effect on our friendly neighborhood ball of fusing hydrogen, and a bit of fiddling around eventually revealed that the instrument had turned its gain way up, allowing one to easily determine the zero point by adjusting the bias until the screen filled with noise (rather than pegging at the top or bottom). If one were to squint a bit, I suppose it might look like the sun shining on the screen?

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