MONEY MONEY MONEY (12 april 2004)
You have probably heard of VAT, haven't you?
It stands for Value Added Tax and is a smart way to levy tax whenever the value of goods is increased. After all, goods tend to become more expensive as their quality gets better.
But what to think of goods that get more expensive as their quality decreases?
 | 
|
| 150 euros | 75 euros |
Would you buy the dress on the left, if it looks worse and costs more than the one on the right?
Well, the Dutch publishing company Van Buuren seems to think they can ask a higher price for less quality.
As you can read in the weblog of 3 March (and many other weblogs I wrote), Ed McBain is an eminent writer of crime stories. My sweetheart, who wanted to find out for herself what McBain's books were like, recently bought one of his novels in Dutch. Although money is not a Dutch word, the title was not translated, just: Money Money Money.
I had the same book in English in my bookcase. Being aware that things easily get lost in translation, I suggested "Why not read it in English?"
Well, she gave it a try, but kept the Dutch edition at hand.
But she had not expected to find such a terrible translation! Not only was McBain's powerful language turned into weak and poor substitute. But in the first forty pages she found over a hundred mistakes. Just to mention a few, here we go:
- The word closet was several times translated by the Dutch word for bathroom.
- Don't the translators know there are good Dutch words for stole, biopters, mink and the East?
- The translators must have been in a hurry because many mistakes have obviously been caused by carelessness. The word sable is mixed up with the table. And a Chinook helicopter is confused with a Chinese one. On one page drawers are translated by shelves, and on another by closets. No difference is made between at least and at last.
- With no apparent reason numbers and times have been changed. Why, for instance, should anyone translate 21st by twenty-second ? Or why is twenty to five translated by the Dutch for twenty past five?
- When phrases were too difficult for the translators, they often left them out altogether.
- And isn't it a bit strange to call a sandy part of desert by the Dutch word for beach?
And did this loss of quality result in a reduction of price? On the contrary: the Dutch version cost almost twice as much as the English one.
Can you imagine my sweetheart felt outright swindled?
