Chinese Companies Want To Sell Cars, But Are Still Learning The Language
This year's Detroit Auto show was apparently much more subdued than in previous years. Automakers have scaled back, allowing room for Chinese car companies to peddle their wares. Consumer Reports says that the quality of the vehicles, and of the marketing material, has improved — sort of.
Here was their reaction to a Chinese car company called "Brilliance:"
Here’s a little tip, Brilliance, if you want to stay out of the basement and maybe even sell a few cars here: Improve the quality of your promotional material right along with your cars. The slick brochure the company handed out to the press at the show lists Strategy Targets, one of which is “High qulty with Chinese brand name.” And quality is spelled just like it appears above, “qulty.” Quality strikes me as a particularly unfortunate word to misspell in promotional literature.
That's bad — but apparently it used to be so, so much worse.
Back in 2007, Consumer Reports compiled a list of some of the most baffling language from a Chinese car company that was looking to enter the US market.
Liebao Black Giant CFA2030: "This vehicle is equipped with Mitsubishi [sic] engine which has been successfully used in World Rally Championship. [sic] It can ignite under low temperature and anoxia."
Everyone knows what anoxia is, right?
Liebao Feiteng CFA6400: "Adopt an off-road attitude towards the city and life. Liebao Feiteng brings a new off-road idea and a true free city life. It carries forward the pure notable blood relationship."
Um, no thank you. I prefer to have bodily-fluid-free relationships with my cars.
Liebao CS7: "In addition to the outward appearance of conquering the innermost being of the vehicle s [sic] owner, it is armed by high-tech equipment in the inside..."
So I guess they've come a long, long way.
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Comments:
how high up do you have to be before an engine cannot turn over? is this a real issue?
Mark my words - these will be sold in the US soon, and available at your local Walmart for $4997.97
@puffyshirt: I suppose in rallies it could be (think Pike's Peak and things like that...around 14k feet or higher). I've never heard of that being a problem with a consumer car, though.
Our cars bring much honor and mesquite to US of A. Abominable willpower makes Chinese workers very effacement. Our quiltity is best.
Time to buy a used steel behemoth.
They've come a wrong wrong way.
Having worked with Chinese clients before as a designer, I've found it is a cultural thing in relation to trying to spend the least amount of money, even if spending more money would net higher returns.
For one project, almost none of the product descriptions for a catalog website had correct English spelling or grammar. When I pointed it out to the project manager, she said that the company already paid for translations and didn't want to spend any more money in that area.
This was also the case with brochures for another company, in which I gave them the template and they had somebody fill in the text on their side and send it to the printers, for which I was doing the press check. I got several phone calls from the press guys before I even showed up asking me if I wanted to run the job because the errors were so great, that even their guys picked up on it (printers aren't obligated to point these things out). I called the Chinese company back and they said their translations were good enough.
On the other hand working for a company here in the US for a project going to China, we laid a lot of money out on not only correct translation into Chinese, but also in having it done int he correct dialect (both Mandarin & Cantonese), regional colloquialisms, as well as getting people with correct accents for voice overs for the TV spots (eg. Mainland accent instead of Taiwanese accent).
Then again,with the amount of people in the United States who fall for e-mail phishing scams that contain large amount of spelling errors, maybe it doesn't even matter anymore.
Engrish.com and some pretty funny signs that have errors like these. Definitely something to pass the time at work or in class.
In Communist China, car drives you?
Seriously, what happens to the guy that mispelled this crap? Does he disappear?
*note, this is somewhat tongue-in-cheek...
Oh, Liebao! Conquer my innermost being!
Well, looks like Chinese cars will be on par with American made cars soon. Both crap - American cars just come in prettier wrapping.
I bet if Korea can improve their cars from pure garbage to what they are now, I bet China can too.
But along with Korean cars, I will never buy a Chinese model.
@RurouniX: Oh and that grammar and spelling is ALSO about on par with an average American high school student.
@puffyshirt: For performance vehicles, it can be a big factor in power. Back when we all had carburators, it was not unheard of to rejet your carb and adjust the fuel/air mix when you were driving through Colorado.
@Triborough: I probably wouldn't either, but it wasn't very long ago that Kia's crash tests were just as bad, and I believe that they're now actually quite good.
The solutions have been already identified and implemented by everyone else in the industry, so all they really need to do is implement them themselves.
Chinglish always gives me a good chuckle.
Not that I would be good at translating English into Chinese.
@downwithmonstercable: I have a feeling a lot of people said the same thing about Japanese cars 20 years ago. Not like the U.S. has a stellar past in quality either. Given enough time and market pressure things can get better.
Scary to think that China might want to sell cars in the US.
There's only one way to stop it. Send the UAW to China to unionize their workforce. Bankrupt the companies and stop the problem at it's source.
I only came in here to point out the comma splice in the headline. The two phrases are not independent clauses, so they should therefore not be separated by a comma. If you add "they" after "but", it would work.
Or is that part of the joke?
@RurouniX: Except American cars , for some reason, cost about three times as much.
I speculate that it's because you have to pay an adult three times as much as a child (even though they have smaller hands and could reach the non-standard hex screws much more easily).
@narq: I was going to say that amazes me, but after all the other crap i've read over the past few years about China it really doesn't.
It'll be tough for the chinese to make it here for more reasons than quality.
In the U.S. they'll face all kinds of lawsuits from other carmakers for intellectual property since most of the Chinese designs are very .... similar... to other brands we know and love.
@Veeber: Yeah, as soon as I posted that, I thought about Japanese cars. I know Japanese cars were looked down upon for a while, mostly for not being American.
But think about it. Japanese cars never tried to position themselves as "look at all this stuff you get for so much less money" the way Hyundai and Kia do. And especially when Lexus was started - Toyota was basically like, "This is a sick car, and it's expensive. You know you want it."
On the other hand Hyundai has introduced the Genesis, which is bigger than the 7 series here, more features than the LS here, quieter ride than E series, all for $10000 less!
Plus, just the reputation of crappy products coming from China doesn't help their rep anyway.
@squablow: LOL - imagine what would happen if China unionized. Basically all the cheap crap we love would disappear.
from the name of the brand and the cars, I would have thought at first it was a German company. Is this a marketing technique, or did they actually buy a German company and keep the name?
I'm a native English speaker, but I studied Mandarin for a couple of years in college. And it's really very eye-opening for why Engrish is the way it is. Chinese is all about context and not so much about putting in things like articles, or verb conjugations, or pronouns... linguistically, it's kind of like leaving out vowels in Arabic or in Hebrew, but you can do it with entire words. Very neat, but ENTIRELY unlike English. Ever since then, I've always cut extra slack to a Chinese speaker who's making a real effort, because English is foreign to Chinese in just about every possible way.
That said, a BUSINESS needs to proofread, then proofread again, then again, and by a third person. And with as high-quality as the English spoken by thousands of Chinese is, I can't believe that a company trying to make a foothold in the US wouldn't have better translators and editors on staff.
@EtoilePB: Proofreading is not enough. They need to hire native English speakers to work on their promotional materials. No amount of proofreading would clue them in that "anoxia" is not a good choice of word.
@TheSpatulaOfLove: If you could absolutely TOTALLY guarantee you wouldn't be in an accident.. sure...
One of my coworkers purchased a chinese knockoff Vespa. In order to make it driveable (note, it was new, he just bought it but before he could drive it safely) he had to replace the oil, oil filter, and spark plugs. And several of the engine's hoses too, I think.
@RurouniX: Well, our American Revolution friends at GM already import quite a few engines for US cars from China..
@downwithmonstercable: I've been more than satisfied with my Hyundai. IIRC, until recently (with the economy going down the shitter) they weren't really pressing the "we're less expensive" side as much. They were more on the quality and warranty train until then.
My concern would be that the warranty might be measured in gymnast years.