I have a new gadget. It’s entertaining and can be used in most situations. It’s in my head, but I’m working on a physical prototype. Ladies and gentlemen I bring you: the GarbageometerTM
It’s simple to operate. Basically you open the lid and stuff in whatever material you want to analyse – comments by Government ministers, a memo from your boss on why bonuses have gone down, other companies’ results announcements – and press the button. The GarbageometerTM will generate a score based on a complex algorithm designed to evaluate level of style over substance, before going on to index it against similar garbage produced in the past 12 months. In this way, you can compare the garbage level of, say, your children’s assurance that they don’t have any homework on the sunniest day of the year, with a major bank’s corporate responsibility report.
It works a treat, but it has one major flaw: it needs a new button for international settings. Because there is a stark fact: while a lot of garbage is produced in English, the tolerance level on the GarbageometerTM is set pretty low. English does not like abstraction. It thrives on concrete examples that prove something specific.
In French, by contrast, you can just about get away with having nothing to say as long as you say it elegantly. I wouldn’t dare to criticise 60 million people, so I haven’t put any original French texts through the GarbageometerTM , only translations of French text into English. That said, many of them ended up in the top quartile.
Incidentally, this is not a gratuitous whinge about the floweriness of the French language. If I ended up here, it’s in part because I like the fact that mundane features of life such as the weather forecast, or a patisserie counter, can be made poetic.
But it does have big implications for French companies trying to communicate in anything other than French. Put simply: they need to think what the final GarbageometerTM score in English is likely to be before finalising the French. Take the following sentence, straight from the HR section in a well-known corporate’s CR report:
“Qu’il s’agisse de recruter, de développer les talents, de fidéliser les collaborateurs ou de faire partager à tous les salariés le projet industriel et social du Groupe, les démarches mises en œuvre par X témoignent d’une volonté constante de dialogue, de progrès continu, de partage des meilleures pratiques et d’adaptation à un environnement en constante évolution. “
Pretty, yes. But at nearly 60 words, the reader finishes gasping for breath. Not only that, but what does it actually say? GarbageometerTM score: around 90.
I’ve also had fun with link labels on websites. So phrases like “A l’écoute de ses collaborateurs” and “L’humain au cœur des préoccupations du Groupe” have gone through the GarbageometerTM, with scores hovering predictably around the 80-mark.
I need to stop there. Otherwise I’ll damage my own score. But my new aim is finding a way of stopping the garbage production in its tracks. If you have a short idea, preferably involving a concrete example, please let me know.
