Every text needs a little understanding

How many times have you come across a text that left you asking, ‘what was that all about?’  This text, lifted from an ad that actually made it into print, challenged our comprehension on a number of levels:

“Offshore, the dugong, the helpless-looking and heartrending sea-cow, plods its way through the depths in harmony with some of the densest tanker traffic in the world.”

The word-choice is more than a little suspect. Could there be a rogue bilingual dictionary in the mix? Offshore: you expect something about an oil rig. Really sad stories can be heartrending, but sea-cows…? And ‘plods’ is a way of walking when our legs feel heavy and tired. And tanker traffic is limited to the surface of the sea, making only the occasional – and permanent – visit to ‘the depths’.

In our next example, it seems that Nordic light, spaciousness and birch products aren’t too popular on the international market:

“The [company] office in Sweden is characterized by the Nordic light. In the spacious premises, paneling and furniture are primarily made up of birchwood. [Company]’s products, however, are aimed at a demanding international market.”

Location, location, location?
“[Company]’s offices are situated in one of the most beautiful areas north of Copenhagen. This fact alone contributes to the readiness of the 22 staff, together with dealers, to face a new era.”

There’s nothing like a dynamic, dedicated team working against you:

“A dynamic and dedicated staff of 30 persons in our head office, and our branch office in Jutland works against our Total Quality Management philosophy in order to keep our position as one of Denmark’s leading suppliers of valves and gaskets not only today and tomorrow, but far into the next century.”

And finally, this geek-speak from the world’s largest networking vendor takes the incomprehension cake:

“Advanced L2 flow-scheduling algorithms to support real-time flows with delay/delay-jitter bounds on the time-slotted multiple access upstream channel.”

If you have any idea what this means, please let us know.