[Tech1] The joy of Chinese instructions.

[David Newbitt]

In the early 60’s when the Pentax SLR was a front runner with amateur enthusiasts, the instructions famously advised “do not touch the flipping mirror”.

Dave Newbitt.

From: Vernon Dyer via Tech1 
Sent: Saturday, July 18, 2020 9:19 PM
To: tech1 
Subject: Re: [Tech1] The joy of Chinese instructions.

“Why don't manufacturers test their instructions on punters before they send them out?”

 

There is (or used to be) a famous set of instructions for setting zoom tracking, something all of us (well, on the camera side of things, anyway) do, or in my case did, without thinking too much about it, but they were so abstruse and wordy as to be hilariously incomprehensible.  I wonder if it’s still available.

 

Best wishes  .....  Vern

 

Sent from Mail for Windows 10

 

From: Alan Taylor via Tech1
Sent: 18 July 2020 19:07
To: Tech-Ops-chit-chat
Subject: Re: [Tech1] The joy of Chinese instructions.

 

It’s not just the Chinese.  We have a cookbook originally published in Germany, but translated into English.

 

To make Thüringen potato dumplings, we apparently need to use a twiddling stick.  We haven’t a clue what they look like, the internet only seems to know twiddling sticks as a type of lure for catching pike.  As Captain Mainwearing might have said, “Don’t twiddle your stick, Pike”.

 

We also have a lamp fitting which came with a label warning us to only use LED bulbs as it wasn’t suitable for indecent lights.

 

Alan Taylor





  On 18 Jul 2020, at 18:34, Bernard Newnham via Tech1 <tech1 at tech-ops.co.uk> wrote:

 Our house is sort of long, and the wifi router is upstairs at the front.  This means that in the kitchen, downstairs at the back, wifi is a bit iffy.  I've used several solutions now, the first being mains connectors, and the second a TP Link wifi extender in the upstairs hall. 

This has been fine till recently, but I think someone nearby has added a high power transmitter or something.  The kitchen wifi has been very average and my digital shower has been acting up too.  So I found one of those new mesh solutions - three small white boxes called a Mercusys Halo S3 Mesh. 

Then I've just spent half the afternoon trying to install them. The instructions assume that you're in a country where they don't supply routers, and are, in any case, completely opaque, obviousely a straight translation. I spent a long time hunting around the internet for something that should have been at the top of the instructions. Eventually a review site said it was easy, and indeed it was, once you know how - plug one box into the (Virgin) router, connect via wifi, give the network a name and password, fire up the other boxes and pair them with the first. Once you know how, ten minutes work.

Why don't manufacturers test their instructions on punter before they send them out?

B


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