text: what do you think of these? bad translation  an influential londoner wound up a business trip to the orient with a visit to taipei. at a luncheon he was asked to say a few words. since he spoke not a word of chinese, his address was to be translated by an interpreter sentence by sentence.  "i want you to know," he began, "i'm tickled to death to be asked here today."  a look of panicked confusion appeared on the interpreter's face. "this poor man," he said in chinese, "scratches himself until he dies, only to be with you today."  #deffective parts  this speaks a lot about the quality of japanese products and their standards:  they're still laughing about this at ibm. apparently the computer giant decided to have some parts manufactured in japan as a trial project. in the specifications, they stated that they will only accept three defective parts per 10,000.  when the delivery came in there was an accompanying letter. it said, "we japanese had a hard time understanding north american business practices. hahahah.....nice ones.....who are fools?americans or japanese?......lol