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Comment by nknighthb | Hacker News Reader

I bet if we could read their Chinese website, the copy would be perfect.

Some manager who probably doesn't speak much English has tasked a random person on their staff who went to college in the US or UK with writing their English copy, without realizing the difference between "this person can communicate effectively 1:1 in English" and "this person can write formal English like a native speaker".

In other words, a task is being supervised by someone who doesn't understand the task. Just like every other company we deal with. As native (or at least highly fluent) speakers, we just happen to be competent to critique it.

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Yes, the Chinese website (http://cn.wrtnode.com/) is perfectly fine. (Chinese is my second language.)

However, I would not immediately characterise the copy as written by a US/UK college grad though - it feels like it is written by someone who learnt English on the mainland.

I don't really know why companies in various parts of East Asia don't hire/outsource to someone who actually is highly fluent in English to write/edit their copy. Sometimes I suspect it is simply due to cost, other times I suspect they just don't realise that their fluency is not quite.. 'international English' level

(No offence to anyone who runs/writes for East Asian company websites.)

For my coworkers based in Taiwan who are somewhat fluent, they mostly don't recognize it, and really can't.

Their limitations are effectively hidden from them. Odd things still come out, but in informal contexts it's not worth correcting, and there's little opportunity for formal critique. (There's also the issue of "face" that complicates matters and drives me insane. It's easier with people who have spent a few years in the US, though.)

If there's no (near-)native speaker around to check, nobody's going to notice until it goes out to the world, and then there are a half billion people ready to jump on it.

If they recognized it, I don't think cost would be a factor. I could review/correct a site like this in an hour (or less). I might spend a day on the mini-manuals that come with some gadgets.

Absolutely. It is ungeileivable.

They don't need better translation. They need a cultural liaison. You can speak English at a very high level but without deep cultural involvement, you won't know that "get out of the city" and "get out of town" have very different meanings.

When the peasants are revolting its very different from when the food is revolting!

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