3

Indeed, "The only man who makes no mistakes is the man who never does anything."

And since we are all here to learn from our and others' mistakes, please don't be embarrassed to share stories. It's for the greater good.

I'll start with a really embarrassing mistake I've done, myself!

The word: "Gengo!"

I spent over 2 years pronunciation the syllable "Gen" in the same way it's pronounced in the words: General, Generous, Gene, Genni ... etc.

My excuse was that all text-to-speech programs I know of did pronounce it in this way!!

I found out about the proper pronunciation 2 years later from Gengo's Youtube channel (https://www.youtube.com/user/gengo). Still, I was accustomed to the wrong pronunciation that I even used it during an interview with the UX designer at Gengo "Mr. Richard Hatton" and I was so embarrassed!!!

The lesson I learnt from this mistake is that; no matter how universal a rule might seem to be, there's always an exception! So, never take something for granted. And always be on guard! :)

 

It's your turn now...

2 comments

  • 0
    Avatar
    Mohamed Yehia

    Oh, that's good from you, Maak, and I think the topic you picked is really interesting.

    I have a story too with Gengo, and it was very embarrassing, it was about my first job I pick with Gengo, it was talking about Star Girl: Moda Italia!!

    There was some text in that paragraph talking about: "any star needs an active social life, so hang out with your friends and go on dates with the hottest guys in town to find your perfect match".

    The problem is my wife was setting next to me when I was working on this job and I was embarrassed from the situation, she thought that all Gengo jobs is just like that, and she was jealous.

    I learned from that situation that working alone may be better for you to finish your job faster and helps you to be more focused. 

  • 0
    Avatar
    Abuda

    Hello.

    Pointing fellow translators' errors is obviously not the most proper way to initiate one's existence in here, but I decided against that since the errors were one too many.

    So here it goes.

     

    "over 2 years pronunciation" -> "over 2 years pronouncing" (this one's fatal)

    "it was about my first job I pick with Gengo" -> (multiple errors here, mixed tenses, wrong modifier, etc.) "it was about the first job I picked with Gengo"

    "The problem is my wife was setting" -> (mixed tenses again, missing "that" and a typo) The problem was that my wife was sitting

    "embarrassed from" -> (one's either embarrassed by or embarrassed about, never embarrassed from)

    "she thought that all Gengo jobs is just like that" -> (I'll let you guess)

    "helps you to be more focused" -> (although technically not an error, this one here counts as a bare infinitive)

Please sign in to leave a comment.