A lot of people are urging the government to cut back on the number of documents they translate into foreign languages. Well here’s one written in a language of their own that could do with being translated into English.
One of our supporters sent this advert over after finding himself totally baffled by the impenetrable wording. It starts off fairly comprehensibly, then descends in to something akin to teenage text speak.
“You are invited to tender for the Evaluation of...” yes?
“...activ8 pre and post 16 NEET’s” eh???
Then there’s a new sentence, so even if we refer to our Dictionary of Excruciating Government Burble and discover that activ8 is some kind of ‘initiative’ run by Connexions Staffordshire (a sort of expensive career guidance service) and that NEET stands for ‘not in education, employment or training’ then we still realise that a) there’s absolutely no need for the apostrophe ‘s’ at the end of the sentence, and b) someone, at some stage clearly thought it’d be pretty ‘funky’ and more accessible for the ‘yoof’ if all titles were misspelled and/or incorporated a numeral.
If that makes you cringe, rather than explain what activ8 is, does or aims to do on behalf of the government and whilst being funded by the taxpayer – well, they say a picture is worth a thousand words: