I have thought for a while, whether I should say/write this here. Finally I made my decision.
In November this year a world conference about acupuncture (WFAS 2016) will be held in Japan. People working in this field probably know this for a long time already.
When I registered the other day via the website set up for the WFAS 2016 I noticed, that the English of that website is of embarrassingly poor quality. Although I contacted (mail) first the secretariat of the conference and second the secretariat of the "Japan Society of Acupuncture and Moxibustion" (JSAM = organizer), neither of these offices considered it necessary to reply to my mail .. or what would have been MUCH better .. correct the mistakes.
I have been trying to 'advertise' the good aspects of Japan (and/or Japanese acupuncture) to the world for about 20 years.
This website looks to me like a deliberate attempt at demonstrating to the world at large, that the Japanese are stupid and don't give a dime about what other people think. Thereby also thwarting my efforts to promote the "MADE IN JAPAN" brand.
I am not really open to the suggestion/excuse, that the organize has not enough money. The general participation fee is about USD 500. Assuming 500 participants register, a not very unrealistic figure, the organizer collects USD 250,000 to run the show. There surely should be 500 USD to ask an agency to draft a proper text. If anybody would ask me (which nobody does!), I would call it a disgrace.
Please! Send them a note. Maybe if a number of non-Japanese people would complain about the strange English, the people in charge might finally wake up ...
