Michael Kadlicz links to a wonderful video advising Germans to learn English, a Berlitz ad.
It’s rather reminiscent of Tony Hancock’s Radio Ham (possibly downloadable here), but more concise.
Transblawg
Weblog on German-English legal translation, no longer from Fürth
Someone sent me that last week Margaret. A wonderful piece of advertising. A friend from Spain and I were repeating it to ourselves and others all week….
It’s an advertiser’s dream … they kow it will get banded about the Internet for free.
Paul
Wasn’t the stereotyping a bit extreme, though?
Dena: well, it’s an advert for Berlitz. I don’t think its intention was to show a fair picture of the German sea rescue service, at least I hope not!
Very clever. But who is the ad aimed at, I wonder, those who get the joke or those who don’t?
Ciaran: yes, I see your point. The main aim is to spread the word Berlitz, but it isn’t getting through to the right people. Still, I could learn another language there, couldn’t I? Could they be worse than the Fürth VHS at teaching Turkish? Still, maybe they should have done it with a speaker of English not managing German.
It has made its rounds in recent weeks (http://www.blog.wahlster.net/?p=376).
Michael, I saw that entry on your blog, but it was accompanied by a request to download the Quicktime plugin, and I didn’t want to. Sorry about that.
QuickTime has been terribly jerky for me so I deleted it a couple of weeks ago with a view to reinstalling, but I am afraid it will take me an hour to sort out the audio problems, and I have some other things to do, so I am going to download it again in my own time. Jez also has something on his blog that requires Quicktime that I must remember to look at.
Of course it could be targeted at employer/manager types who are expected to get the joke but then fret that their underlings won’t.
The distressed seaperson sounds suspiciously like a TEFL teacher, don’t you think?
That’s true. The distressed young coastguard has been well trained to sound the way Germans do in British films.