A funny story

Today I have a funny story I would like to share. I receive this one as forwarded mail and it made me smile.

A salesman of Coca-Cola returned from his assignment to China.   A friend asked,  "Why weren't you successful with the Chinese?"

The salesman explained, "When I got posted, I was very confident that I would make a good sales pitch. But I had a problem. I didn't know how to speak Mandarin. So I planned to convey the message through three posters. 

   

First poster: A man lying in the hot desert sand totally exhausted and fainting.
Second poster: The man is drinking Coca-Cola.
Third poster: Our man is now totally refreshed.

And then these posters were pasted all over the place.   "Terrific! That should have worked!" said the friend.   "The hell it should have!" said the salesman.
"No one told me they read from right to left!"         

Ha Ha Ha. I hope this story wasn't real. If you read from right to left, it can be interpreted that drinking Coke makes you eshausted. So no Chinese would drink Coke anymore. This story teaches us that cross cultural communication is very important. If you want to communicate with someone outside your culture, you have to learn and study their cultures very well, otherwise you might make some mistakes like this salesman in the story. This can apply to translation as well because translation is a form of communication. This is why translators have to understand the cultures of  their source languages and their readers. Otherwise, they might mistranslate the texts and make the readers misunderstant the text.

Oh my dear!

Hi friends,

How is your weekend? Hope it is good.

I would like to tell you that I did something bad yesterday. What a shame!

Yesterday evening, while I was walking around my yard, I saw something in green clinging to my jasmine twig. Then, I was scared of it. I thought that it might be a green snake, but it wasn’t. It was a 3 inch-green caterpillar! (it looks like a caterpillar of Unif Green Tea)

Do you know how I managed it? I covered my hand with a plastic bag. Then, I tried to pick that caterpillar out. Unfortunately, its body was sticky so I pressed it quite hard. Later, some parts of its skin came off to my hand. Oh pity caterpillar!

I think I was silly that time (because I pressed it).  Next, I came up with an idea—just cut the twig off so that the caterpillar would not be pressed!

Yes, I did so and I carried that jasmine twig to leave the caterpillar on the little yard in front of my house.

I feel guilty about this. I am not sure if it is still alive. I will be sad If it dies.

I will not  harm a caterpillar anymore because it can develop into a beautiful butterfly.

I hope it is safe now.

Have a good week! Bye