You know when you watch Asian TV and literally nothing makes sense?See this truck? Maybe there's a Korean pop-cultural reference I'm missing here. I'm not going to attack Koya Ajoe juice. It's delicious. In fact if someone wants to ship me a case, I'll bathe in it on YouTube. The ad is well-meaning with good photography but the message is a disaster.
So how will I vent? I could easily make this about the value of translators (plural) or the three-second rule of advertising, but follow up on the happy theme of failure with a look at screwing up royal. No one wants to hear they made a mistake, but how you handle it says a lot about you.
I was always in awe of how the Japanese handle blame. Working in North America, when something goes wrong there is a flurry of finger pointing like people are dodging a shit-sprinkler (pardon the language). Throw someone, anyone under the bus, deke fault and distance yourself, get the promotion. In Japan, step one is to identify the problem, fix the situation, and only then is someone asked to put a sword in their stomach. The North American model may lack honour, it may be cowardly and shameful, but it's an honest reaction pre-programmed since school.
If you're freelance, it's just you. You're at the bottom of the trough, and if something goes wrong, guess what - the best thing to do is climb under the bus voluntarily.
WHAT TO DO: 101
To begin, repeat after me: "I'm sorry". Show some contrition to your client and get right to work on it.
Step two, show them the cause of the error wasn't a brain injury by describing a solution and get approval to proceed. Did we mention the client is the one who found the mistake? Make them feel that they're a part of the solution process to put them at ease. Now fix that problem. Stay up all night. Eat that cost. Whatever it takes. And if pushed or taken to task, let your pride take a backseat and honestly explain what went wrong, no matter how dumb.
The odds are the cooperative process of your repair job will be worth more goodwill than the damage of admitting Twitter is destroying your life and you promise to quit shortly. As long as there's an open line of communication, you're working as a partnership, and you can save yourself a lot of pain.
So do I consider this Aloe ad a mistake? I've worked with translators and they can be a shady bunch. Not every one of them is going to be the first to point out how culturally irrelevant your headline is once it turns into french or spanish. So unless "crush" translates from Korean as "delicious beverage", then at best, it's wrong for me.
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