I’m one of those odd people who actually read the directions before I use a new product. But I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to do that.
I bought a moisturizer the other day. It seemed a good idea to read the directions for applying it— in case there was a warning about it turning me green or giving me a deadly rash. Hoping to read without having to grope for my glasses, I squinched up my eyes, turned the bottle upside down, then sideways to make the tiny print come into focus.
Squinching tighter and tighter, I finally made out “Una base de maquillahe hidratante ultra-ligera con nuestro exclusivo y sayave, pero altamente efectivo, filtro de proteccsion contra los CEM.”
Wow! These were complicated directions! I’d better put on my glasses if I had to do all that! I thought.
When I settled my readers on my nose, I discovered that I was reading the ingredients in Spanish. They were also printed in German and some oriental language.
What I couldn’t find were simple directions in English.
I kept skimming through the print until I found something sort of recognizable: “Ein Wort zum Thema Qualitat.” Did that mean “this product gave Thelma quality warts”?
Perception is everything, and I was beginning to perceive that I shouldn’t have bought this item. I didn’t want any warts, quality or not. Let Thelma have them.
Have you noticed this phenomenon too — that product information is now given in every major language? Our global economy requires that consumers in other nations must find instructions, ingredient lists and exhortations to buy in their own language.
This presents a set of problems that never occurred to the buyers of Moon Pies in the 1950s, who just had to be able to read M-o-o-n P-i-e on the label in English in order to get their favorite gourmet dessert. I guess Moon Pies weren’t sold in foreign countries like California and Colorado because no one complained about the directions only being in English: “Remove wrapper before chewing.”
The first problem of multi-lingual product advertising is that I’m often not sure what I’m buying. With all those languages on the box, am I buying vanilla wafers, crepe suzette, potato pancakes or fortune cookies?
Having to provide instructions in so many languages means that manufacturers either present you with a wad of paper the size of the New York Times to dig out of your box of Wart-Be-Gone, or the print is so tiny that you can’t see it without your drugstore readers and the Hubbell telescope.
A clerk told me the other day that one product I was buying now costs more because the company redesigned the packaging to include Spanish information. It costs more to double the amount of print on a package, but the company hopes to earn more by selling the product to our growing Hispanic population. So I have to pay more for words that I can’t read. And where’s the incentive for our newcomers to learn English?
More product directions are already being printed in Chinese, Iranian, Sudanese, and Martian to serve the flood of illegals coming into America, who will, no matter what else they may do here, be consumers.
I really have a problem when the product is made in another country and shipped to us here. People in that country who took two years of English are writing directions to go with their merchandise.
That’s why, when I tried to program my Chinese cookpot, I got confused by the instructions to “take timer to the down of minutes and ours.” I had no screaming idea what that meant, even though it was written in English. I can sympathize with the writer, though, I took four years of French, and I don’t think I could write out the directions in French for slicing a rutabaga, much less programming a cooker.
I’m getting worried. Today almost everything except cornbread is made in China. If I can barely make out “Thelma got warts” in German—and English is a Germanic language— how will I ever get my makeup on if the directions are in Chinese?
Today even a package of toilet paper has instructions in five languages. I’d never thought about needing directions for toilet paper, but Charmin can now wipe you in English, Spanish, French, Dutch and Portugese!
The package told me in English, “A Charmin clean, now that feels good!” In Spanish I read that “Una limpieze Charmin, Eso si se siente bien!” (With some other upside down exclamation marks thrown in —maybe to point to where the toilet paper is to be used.)
Seems to me we could save a lot of money and confusion if the manufacturer just wrote it once in Simpson County English: “Wipe yoself.”
With those clear directions, we don’t even need the directional arrows!
