Hands-On Translation Service

First published: 20^th February 2012

I received this invitation from staff at a translation company on the LinkedIn social network website. I don't think I'll be enquiring about their translation services any time soon, particularly as they appear to be offering massages with the translation.

So, the main issue is spelling, with some additional grammar errors. In detail:

• intruduce A miss-spelling of introduce.
• have the enquiry The sentence is complete without this phrase. Perhaps the writer intended to elaborate, for example, "My company would like to receive your translation enquiries."
• massage I hope this is a miss-spelling of message. A massage is when a person (or maybe a machine, e.g. a massage chair) rubs or kneads your body. A message is a communication from a source to a destination.
• and regret to bother you Who is regretting? The "and" links to regret to the previous instruction to the recipient, so I'm supposed to regret being bothered; well, yes, I do, but I don't need the writer to tell me that. Inserting "I" or "we" would improve it: "and we regret to have bothered you", but rearranging the sentence would be better: "If you don't need our services, we regret to have bothered you, please ignore our message."