Yesterday I wrote about the importance of words. Today’s post is, in some way, about the same thing. I was undecided wether to put this in the “culture shock” category or not, as this is not a “Russia specific” issue, but it is a shock for me, nonetheless, and it has to do with culture. So it says in this category!
In Italy, where I come from, people are (as a rule) not very familiar with English. Heck, the majority of Italians aren’t very familiar with proper Italian, either. Therefore you can see a seemingly endless series of funny handwritten signs or printed translations that either make no sense or are wrong in a funny way. And I am sure that if you are a good proofreader you can catch tons of mistakes in my posts.
All this said, here comes the “culture shock” part. Italians (and, as far as I can tell, people from all over the world) are much less cavalier when it comes to creating a company’s logo, claim or pay-off. I mean: that’s literally the first thing people see about your company, wouldn’t you want to avoid embarrassing mistakes there? If you are trying to pass yourself as an expert in Italian fashion (top, a store in a shopping mall in the center of Moscow) or in authentic Italian food (bottom, a chain of restaurants in Smolensk), wouldn’t you think it is a good idea to check the spelling of the Italian words you use? :-O
I don’t expect all my twenty-five readers to speak Italian (but if you know why I wrote precisely 25 readers, hats off to you!) so here are the “proofread” signs. 🙂
I understand that Russian words don’t have double letters and that the only one they actively use is “Pizza”, but not all Italian words with a “Z” actually have a double Z!
The letter “H” in Italian is also a bit tricky, as it doesn’t really have a sound on its own, but it modifies the sound of the letter preceding it (like the ь – soft sign – and ъ – hard sign – in Russian), but this is not a valid excuse not to imply it when it is needed! 😉
Russia Through The Lens 