Monday, September 24, 2007

An English teacher's nightmare!

This card was given to me by a friend who got it from someone who stayed at the Alkabir Hotel in Tripoli. Well, at least there are no spelling mistakes!

Dear Guest

We are pleasure to welcome you in one of Social Security Hotels. We are sure that you will enjoy a very happy accommodations.

Our policy is good welcome for you and to Prepare amicable friendly good atmosphere for You, and to render for you brilliant service distinguished with courtesy, cleverness and respect.

We kindly request you to help us for achieving our Objective by filling the attached questionnaire Overload before leaving our hotel.

Thank you for your co-operation, and for Choosing our hotel, we are looking forward to Welcome you again soonest.

Click on the image for a larger picture.

17 comments:

  1. Travelling around, I have seen some mistakes but this one beats them all! lol

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  2. Oh! God help us, this is from a hotel in Tripoli? If it’s from a shop owner or a street person I can have some kind of understanding to that, but from a hotel in Tripoli? There should be an international law prohibiting anyone from speaking or writing any language if it’s not spoken or written fluently

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  3. ROTFL at "social security hotel" - social security rocks in the Great Jamahiriya LOL!

    Where else does social security put the needy in grand hotels??

    :-P

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  4. any way this is not our language, like this mistake happen evry where, even in Arabic from people who is native. if u check every letter in Arabic you find mistake so what about other language. so why oh!God help us!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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  5. Well at least they tried you have to give them credit for that.

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  6. Maybe you should write them a corrected version? I think it is funny for sure and will give people something to take home and talk about. It's not like there aren't translations services, oh wait this was probably translated by a service.

    At least they are making an effort?

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  7. salam
    its funny the way it been written,confusing is the word.but give its due its a stip forward, we all learn by our mistakes,its owned by the libyan social security autherization i think.)هيئة الضمان الاجتماعى

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  8. Kifhalek Khadija?
    Yeah, I could spot some grammatical mistakes, but I assume there are more than those I noticed, although it sounds ironic, and the note is too long, but I really want to know the mistakes and how to correct them, would you please rewrite it in a proper English, so it will be easy for everyone to know the mistakes and how to correct them? :)

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  9. To Anonymous
    Here's a simple welcome to Alkabir hotel guests:-

    Dear Guest
    Welcome to Alkabir hotel.
    We are pleased to have you in our hotel. Our objective is to make sure you’re pleased too and our friendly respectful staff are providing you with the proper service, atmosphere during your stay with us.
    In an order for us to achieve our objectives we kindly ask your help by filling out the attached questioner sheet and submitting it to the front desk
    Thank you for choosing our hotel, and for your co-operation. We are looking forward to serve you again in the near future.

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  10. I'm not sure which part of me is twitching the most at the grammar. Looks like they took lessons from my big brother-- and he's a native speaker with exceptionally poor grammar-- I sometimes wonder how he got his BA in History from OU (but then I realize-- most Okies talk and write like that, I tutored some of them, and nearly came unjointed every day!!) I think it's a common ESL mistake-- they may speak the language, but grammar is its own monster. And I think the monster ate the Hotel Al Kabir staff member responsible for this door sign. Somebody PLEASE help them out!

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  11. My OWN revised version:

    Dear Guest:
    We are pleased to welcome you to the Hotel Al Kabir. We are sure that you will have a very happy stay with us. (Should any part of your stay be less than satisfactory, please feel free to contact the front desk with any concerns-- all stuff I added)

    Our policy is to welcome you strongly, to provide a friendly, comfortable atmosphere for you, and to provide for you top service distinguished by courtesy, cleverness(?) (I would put "privacy" instead), and respect.

    We ask that you help us achieve our objectives by filling out the attached questionnaire before checking out from the hotel.

    Thank you for your cooperation, and for choosing our hotel. We are looking forward to greeting you again on your next stay.

    ~MMH~

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  12. I think this Welcome Note belongs to the age when the concept of having foreign tourists was Sci-Fi....
    There is a fellow wrote about english not our language and all...yes u r right..But we r talking about an institution here,with enough resources to make such simple thing like this note right...U talked about mistakes in arabic that made by native arabs??yeah,i can understand that,but i will never stand such a mistake made by a local (institution),,right???
    Thank u for sharing
    Benghazi Citizen

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  13. hi,the card looked 2 be very cool i gues lots of money been spent for n some more money has gone some other puckets (perhaps)at least it should've been done in a proper way,the way that fits with the (socialest greatest soonest etc etc etc...)excuse me,however it sounds brilliant ain't it??!(amicable friendly,social security etc etc..)cool man!!but i'm still very quite sure that there're loads more people in tripoli can do it much better than that so why the heavens they don't get the job???anybody?

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  14. LOOOOOL that is soo great walhee made me seriously laugh, LIBYA is great i got to say for english, cnt get anybetter or worse than us loool, i got to say its not the first libyan english mistakes i haev come across, the nice place in gergarish the new mall place well i went to that resturant place, and their menu was to die for hahahaha it was very educational for me my lil brother and my mum, whos english is better than i actually knew
    thnks for this post maybe me laugh wen i needed one ;)
    Afnan

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  15. I think the translator just wrote everything in arabic then pasted it on one of those translation websites (babelfish or google).

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  16. my...ahem personal version:

    Dear condemned.

    Welcome to our most great motel. Our exceptionally lazy staff will be more than welcome to make your stay here as uncomfortable as possible. I hope you like the atmosphere, as smoking is allowed everywhere,(we believe in freedom in this country....I mean this motel).
    I would really appreciate it if would fill in the questionnaire left beside the dirty towels in your room(cage) to allow us to better our service for our dear guests. We would also appreciate leaving a healthy tip as the exchange rates aren't what they once were.
    We look forward to seeing you again or even hearing from you.

    The Management.

    P.S. If any problem arises I am sorry to say you will not be entitled to a refund and you will not be able to sue.

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  17. e_smash's version made me laugh. I love seeing letters and signs like this - there's a protest sign that made me laugh saying To Gaddafi: Our bloode is very expensive and you will pay for that as soon as possibol....written exactly like that lol and we are broud to be libyan

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