SME BlogPerspectives and omissions
Franchise News is carrying a story about Kall-Kwik, the printer, on its website here. Those of you who don’t want to click on the link needn’t bother – it’s about the …
Franchise News is carrying a story about Kall-Kwik, the printer, on its website here. Those of you who don’t want to click on the link needn’t bother – it’s about the Maidstone branch of that organisation getting coverage on The Apprentice, translating (into French) and printing a poster for one of the teams.
Presumably the hack who wrote this piece – or indeed re-typed a press release – didn’t actually see the programme. Those of us who did will recall the price of the job was one of the things that lost that particular team its task that week. The other factor against the poster was that the French didn’t actually translate back into English all that well. They’d turned it around quickly by all means but done a shoddy job and overpriced it. Personally I’d never ask a printer for a translation, I’d go to a translator, but if I were a printer I wouldn’t claim to be able to do the job either.
The story achieves one thing, though: I’d forgotten it was Kall-Kwik behind the job. Thanks for the reminder, guys – a little more detail another time would be good!
Guy Clapperton is a freelance journalist who specialises in small business issues and has written for the likes of The Guardian, the FT and the Daily Mirror. Guy has written about finance and franchising for SmallBizPod. http://www.guyclapperton.co.uk
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I personally think that your comments about Kall Kwik were a little unfair. Kall Kwik offer a range of services and each particular franchise has their own niche of products and solutions which can include translation. Kall Kwik has moved on a long way from it’s original printing roots and I would love the opportunity to discuss on how we as a franchisee have expanded the business services which we provide.
Thanks for commenting, Alistair. The blog posting is about a particular story in which Kall Kwik sings the praises of a particular branch on a particular occasion. The work appeared on TV and they’d visibly botched the translation (the BBC even put an hilarious subtitle in with what the banner *actually* said). Someone clearly thought ‘we’ve been on telly, let’s capitalise on it’ without, perhaps, having watched the programme – nobody who’d done so would have drawn attention to it again, let alone written a press release highlighting translation from that branch.
My intention was to comment on the misleading angle of the individual article rather than to reflect on Kall Kwik overall and I’m happy to make that clear.
Seems fair enough to me.
I did see that episode, though it was quick, describing it as a top quality product….well it really wasn’t.
Quite an entertaining string of event really. Granted as far as I know KallKwik to have an excellent reputation.
I wonder how they do their translation?
Regards
Peter