Do you ever read an ad – one of the hundreds, if not thousands, that land unsolicited in your inbox each week – and think This sounds like a translation from a foreign language’ or even I’m not sure if the person who sent me this ad actually understands a word of it’?
Here’s one that struck me as being a rather poor translation – and it therefore immediately inclined me not to believe it. The first paragraph read:
Stephan Ducharme, the “Free Ad Guru” just released his new 9 steps ! It is what everybody is waiting for since weeks now and it just was released.’
Well, for a start what does his new 9 steps’ mean? An aerobic exercise? A dance? It might make more sense to say his new 9-step program’ or his new 9-step course’. And the second sentence would of course make more sense if it read: It is what everybody has been waiting for for weeks now, and it’s just been released.’
Next paragraph: ‘Thousands of marketers just jumped on it in the same day. Don’t wonder why.’
That makes three justs’ in three sentences so far. And perhaps this really is a dance routine – all this jumping, after all.
The ad doesn’t improve. We get the usual stuff about Stephan Ducharme being an internet millionaire at 31, and then:
‘His top affiliates are making $5000.00 a week selling his ebook right now. It sells like hot bread.’
I think the expression should be: It sells like hot cakes.’ When I look at the hot bread’ version, my eye trips me up and sees: It *smells* like hot bread.’
The 9 steps which are making everybody jump came about as a result, apparently, of 2 years of brain sweat’. Yuck – give me hot bread any time.
But if I ignore this offer I will, I am told, slap myself’. Ouch.
Well, I know it’s difficult to write an eye-catching ad. I know some of them all sound the same – indeed, *are* the same (how many times have you read similar ones about Stephan Ducharme?), so of course it can be a good idea to vary the text a bit, make it more your own. But if in doing so, you become incomprehensible or inadvertently funny – perhaps because the language you’re writing in isn’t your mother tongue – your efforts are almost bound to be counter-productive. In short, no one’s going to trust you to know what you’re talking about.
It’s always worth getting a friendly someone – and someone who’s a native speaker of the language you’re writing in – to read through your ad before you send it out. And if you don’t know any other friendly someone, send it to me at webmaster@virginiarounding.com and I’ll be happy to advise.
Virginia Rounding is a published writer whose website of
Internet Resources for Writers looks at additional ways for
writers to earn money, in the hope of making it possible
for them to keep writing without having to resort either to
full-time employment or to destitution. For a selection of
free resources or to subscribe to her new ezine Poetry
Competition Updates, go to
http://www.virginiarounding.com/links.html
