Sunday, April 03, 2005

German Buzzwords You Love To Hate

Kundennähe. Try to find a definition of this word. Go on – I dare you. In my extensive research (i.e., searching Google for 60 seconds), I found zilch. Sometimes it means “better customer service”. Sometimes “having a branch close to the customer”. Who knows?
That said, I recently saw something in English that covered both bases: “even closer personal service”. Maybe I’ll give that one a try.

X setzt auf Y. Has anyone ever come up with a decent translation for this? All it means is X bought Y’s product or service. But you have to dress it up. Sure, if one of the two is a bank you can say that X banks on Y. Everything else is equally weak:
X goes with Y (I guess X is wearing Y’s class ring, too.)
X opts for Y (at gunpoint, I gather)
X partners with Y (a bit exaggerated)
Y saves X’s business/life/marriage/etc. (Y would certainly love that one)

Faszination Produkt
. This means absolutely nothing. But it sounds good. The challenge is to invent something equally windy.

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