TAG Heuer Carrera Calibre 1887 43 Silver (CAR2012.FC6236)

With Baselworld just having closed its doors last month, journalists and bloggers are all scrambling to complete one all-encompassing task alongside regular daily duties: clean up their offices, desktops and floors to free them from the flood of press kits that have accumulated since January. No small task, let me assure you.
In attempting to restore order to my office, I have opened and read so many press texts that if I put them together end-to-end, I would not be surprised if they reached from Geneva to New York. That's a lot of paper, even if most of it is digital "paper" these days.
Although this is not new, it has occurred to me that each of these press texts contains elements that I loosely call "Swisspeak," even if it is not solely characteristic of Switzerland's brands and agencies alone. "Swisspeak" is my word for marketing language as it pertains to watches.

As a journalist interested in providing quality and an unbiased opinion (as far as that can be achieved), I don't as a rule let a press release color my opinion of a watch or a brand. After all, I use it only to obtain information. However, as someone who often translates texts, I find myself automatically judging the quality of translations (again, not the watches, just the text translations). While a general or agency translator cannot possibly know every technical term he or she is charged with using in a horological translation, he or she should at least know where to go to find the proper term. However, the fact that a general translator was and continues not to be able to translate the simple word "Neuheit" in German or "nouveaute" in French to end up with the words "new product" is a mystery to me - unless the first texts to use the incorrect "novelty" were simply translated by non-professionals. The problem here is that this mistranslation caught on and is now used in every single press text - and not only those originating in Switzerland. For those not in the know: a "novelty" is defined in the dictionary as, "an article of trade whose value is chiefly decorative, comic, or the like and whose appeal is often transitory." And while it is not the only definition the dictionary gives, an American or a Brit will generally immediately think of chattering teeth, plastic dog poo or a whoopee cushion when this word is used.
 

If you don't believe me, just ask journalist Ken Kessler. In the April issue of International Watch, he opened his story about the TAG Heuer Mikrogirder with this sentence, "Forget, for a moment, the clumsy mouthful of a name. It is, after all, a moniker conceived in a country that continues to use 'novelties' as the term for new models." At any rate, any self-respecting writer with English as his or her mother tongue should literally cringe when confronted with the awful usage of this word, as repeated and endless as it is. However - and this is the astonishing part - the incorrect usage of it is spreading and perpetuating. This may be at least somehow understandable where marketing people are concerned, but to my great surprise I have even caught esteemed, well-read colleagues using it. Thank you, Ken, for your regular and justified public tirades against this misuse. A note to all English speakers: regardless of how many press releases you see using this word, don't fall into the trap. Do what I do and retranslate it in your head before it comes out your mouth (or your pen).
A recent discussion with another colleague actually brought another of these words to light, and I am one of the guilty in this respect: pink gold versus rose gold. My colleague could even pinpoint the exact translator who probably first translated "or rose" ("Rosegold" in German) into rose gold instead of the more usual "pink" gold in use at the time. Because I personally find the term "rose gold" more poetic, I tend to use it. My colleague assures me, however, that "pink" is the proper term. So what is more important: poetry or correctness? With "novelty," you have neither.

And now for something more serious
Much more serious in these press releases, however, is the use of the word "iconic." How can so many watches be described as iconic? Doesn't the word actually preclude a certain exclusivity?
Next, of course, we arrive at the all-important "limited editions" - and I have to say that the use of this particular luxury marketing tool is out of hand, resulting in a loss of meaning. Have "limited edition" and "iconic" become the new novelty? If so, then don't sit on them like whoopee cushions or the air might just all noisily escape, helping them lose their meanings. Or have they already?