Tuesday, August 4, 2009

ZOMG

And how could I forget this morning to talk about the latest Interweave Knits? Well, one particular thing. Leaving aside the photo of the Barcelona jacket that made the model's head look as tiny as a very tiny thing, indeed, it's this deeply weird ad that caught my eye.

ZAOL

Click through, if you must. I'll wait.

In case it's too blurry, it says
Dear the precious.
No more Acrylic!
ZAOL pursuit more ecological
healthy close to the nature.
We will try to make yarns
your hands feel more happy
like ZAOL means friendly
from Korean ancient word.

Doesn't IK offer proofreading as part of their services? Did anyone else notice this ad? I looked on Ravelry, but all I saw were a couple posts looking for a sweater pattern.

4 comments:

Jane Prater said...

Saw the ad. Was purplexed by it. I own some Zaol yarn which is quite nice. As a former English teacher, I assumed this was submited as is, and it is a literal translation from Korean to English. IK just publishes what the client sends; client is totally responsible for camera ready ads.

pdxknitterati/MicheleLB said...

We were in Vietnam and Tokyo last month, and we saw a lot of menus and hotel brochures that read like this! I find it mildly amusing, because it's so earnest.

Alison said...

Haha - I saw that too and assumed it was a literal translation. However, I think addressing your customer base as "Dear the precious" is just delightful and should no doubt be more widely used.

j9 said...

Ha! I scanned and emailed the ad to my 21 yr old daughter who is studying in S. Korea. She said most Koreans don't know how to use English well, but genuinely want to learn. She is tutoring conversational English. There are not many English speakers in the country and random people stop her on the street and want to try out their English and practice it with her. She says so far all of them are really nice! I want the pattern for the sweater at the top of the ad and couldn't find any reference to it on their website (she also says their websites aren't updated as often as most of the ones we are familiar with). She is going to try to track it down for me the next time she is in Seoul!