THE GOOD SAMARITAN WAS NUTS - STUPID, IN FACT

The telephone call came unexpectedly. Someone named Brian claimed that an employee at INNERVISION, where I had done some recording work in Portuguese, had told him that I could advise him on how to correct a word in an ad which a St. Louis company was planning to send to Brazil. I asked him to let me know what the word was by spelling it. Once I had it, I asked what he wanted me to do. "I'd like to know where the accent goes".

"It doesn't go anywhere. There is no such word in Portuguese."

"What," he said, "I have it here in front of me."

"You may have it, but it's not in Portuguese."

"I'll read the other words around it to give you an idea."

He then read whatever he had using English phonetics. "I think I know what you're looking for," I replied. "But I'll tell you what. Please fax me the entire text, for I believe you have several other errors." He hesitated at first, but, after some prodding, agreed. My suspicions were correct. The ad not only had several misspellings, but also expressions that showed that whoever had translated it from English was not acquainted with Portuguese. I have seen many similar ads originating in the United States, although few with as many spelling errors as Brian's.

Once I had read the material, I decided to call him back and inform him of what I'd found. I then offered to help - free of charge. I even went so far as to fax him an approximate sample of what should be done. By the time the material got to him his office must have already closed. That evening, however, after due consideration, it suddenly dawned on me that, perhaps, I had not sent him what his company was actually trying to convey. After all, I had worked from a bunch of Portuguese words put together, some almost making no sense.
It was then that I decided to call Brian once again, leaving a message in his answering machine. It was approximately 12:45 a.m., a time when most rational people are already in bed. In my message I asked that Brian call me back that morning. He never did. In fact, when I called him at 10:30 the next day, he told me that he had only called me to correct one word. "The material," he said, "has already gone through."

"But, Brian," I replied. "You are doing your company a disservice if you let that material go through."

"Well, what you did is only a matter of taste. Besides, we had the job done by a professional translator."

"But, what if that translator is a professional who doesn't know Portuguese? Do you think it's fair to your company to present itself sort of naked before the people it's trying to impress?"

Brian would hear no additional reasoning. "The material has gone through. Besides, I know for certain that it's only matter of taste."

"It's not a matter of taste. It's a matter of correctness."

He still would not agree.

Somehow I felt I was arguing with a mule. Or, at least, with the type of attitude that, in times of war, makes national leaders successul. Hitler, for example, argued against the Jews and it wasn't long when a rather rational people descended to the lowest behavior just out of sheer obedience to a man, rather than to reach into the depths of their own souls. Brian, on the other hand, had had his translator. Never mind how wrong the latter had been. Or it could have been that Brian himself had been led to believe that anyone owning a Portuguese-English, English-Portuguese Dictionary was sufficient to make sense out of words?. On the other hand, I felt insulted by his attitude. Not because the ad had already gone through, but by his comparing the integrity of my knowledge with someone else's taste. Had he said, "sorry to have inconvenienced you, but the ad has gone through, for that's the way it was approved," I would have dropped the matter and gone on with my life. On the other hand, he equated something that would have been correct with something that was a total piece of linguistic garbage and called it "taste".

Whose taste? The taste of ignorance versus knowledge?
Furthermore, I felt, did his employer have a right to pay for something that was wrong, and which damaged its image just because some underling who didn't know what he was doing considered ignorance and knowledge as just "a matter of taste"?

Although I may sound arrogant, I am certain that had his employer wanted just some words to go out with seal, logo, image, etc., it would not have spent time, money, effort in putting the ad together. A simple set of letters from the alphabet would have sufficed.

On the other hand, Brian's assertion continued to perturb me. In his attitude I could see how years ago American auto executives disrupted thousands of lives not just by the poor product their companies were putting out, but by eventually losing several markets to competitors whose tastes were more equitable with quality than with the "schlock" being shoved down American throats. Furthermore, I also knew that, were his company aware of how it was being sabotaged in its message, it would not have liked it.
That particular company had not reached its success by abandoning its search for quality. On the contrary. Besides, although my participation in it is minute, I was, and still am, one of its stockholders. Armed with those facts, I decided to telefax the company's president.

Suddenly all hell broke lose. At first the people who called me, like Brian, tested my integrity in my native language. I stood ready to defend it. Eventually I was told that the ad would not go out and that a new one would be prepared. Somehow, shortly after hearing that, I felt sleepy as if reaching for the mythical dreams of the just.

About two hours later, however, I got a telephone call from a translations agency that had originally put me in contact with INNERVISION questioning why I had done what I did. Furthermore, its owner affirmed, what difference would it make if the ad had gone out as it was? After all it was none of my business and, besides, the company did a lot of business with his agency and he didn't want to antagonize anyone. My action sort of made me look like the bearer of bad news in Roman times, a messenger that, by doing his duty, would get his head chopped off. Having worked at one time for a large American corporation, the revelation was not new to me. In America, it seems, one isn't usually required to know much, or do things properly. The trick is to get along, to never "rock the boat" even if one may be forced to do so while trying to plug up its holes.
I could feel as I talked to the person on the other side of the phone, who, by the way, indicated that he had had nothing to do with the translation, that he feared for retribution and I sympathized with his plight. I did not soothe him in the least when I told him that, in reality, the original company should trust him even more now that it knew that his contacts were not as incompetent as the ones they had originally used for the Portuguese translation. "But, you're wrong," he said. "That's not how the system works. You would certainly make a bad courier," he repeated without ever being aware that the real bad courier in the particular case we were discussing would have been the idiotic message that would have been sent out hadn't I interfered.

On the other hand, I am starting to feel that the man from the translation agency may have been right, while I was definitely wrong. Even my wife agreed with him. "What did you gain from your action?" She asked.

Somehow I couldn't answer her. I am not the best person in the world. Far from it. On the other hand, I am the type that if I go into a department store and see a perfectly usable article on the floor I just don't pass by and leave it alone. I pick it up and, if I can't find where it came from, I leave it on whatever stand is available so that it will not be damaged. Nothing perturbs me more than to see mothers at the Public Library, trying to give their children the reading habit, and simultaneously not picking up the books that the same children dump books all over the floor and return them to a table - any table. Somehow I feel that all of us have a responsibility to help should the effort be minimal and chance to do good within our reach. When Brian called me originally, for example, I did not tell him that my correcting his original non word and the rest of the text would cost "x". I offered myself because the challenge was there. Period. Furthermore, in spite of the minute amount of stock I own in Brian's company, I felt that what I did was the least I could do to justify the most minute protection of my minute investment. Is that any different from the action of any reasonable citizen who, upon seeing someone vandalize a building, calls the police on the perpetrator? Granted the citizen gains nothing from his actions. On the other hand, where does it say that everything we do must be for one's own gain? In the vandal's case, for example, the citizen's call definitely does interfere with his, or her, view of "freedom". Most reasonable people, however, will agree that the vandal's "freedom" terminates upon the destruction of someone else's property. Where, therefore, was the difference between my faxing the "police" (The company paying for the ad) and informing it that, in a way, it too was being "vandalized" by inaccuracies?

Or was I wrong simply because there was no financial gain for me? Where does it say that I, too, must always act as if everything I do must have a reward beyond the feeling of seeing something turn out well? Granted that, perhaps, some of the individuals up the corporate line who had approved the ad originally may have had the corporate wrists slapped. But whose fault was that, anyway? Mine, or theirs? Did they have their company's interest at heart when, upon being told of their errors, they still went ahead with their pretensions that they knew what they were doing? That it was only a matter of taste? Oh, come on... Give me a break.

Manuel L. Ponte
St. Louis Missouri, February 10, 1995