How I became a Web Mistress
Once, not so long ago, in a land far, far away (Thailand, in fact), I worked in an Internet cafe. Despite the boss, I enjoyed the job. In addition to working in the cafe, I set up and fixed computers, wrote HTML, tutored people on computer use, and managed web sites. So, among other things, I was a webmaster, that being the most used term for those who set up and managed sites (male or female). Not being much interested in worrying about sexism in language, I was perfectly happy to call my self a webmaster.
One evening, I was watching a beautiful sunset. At the time, Indonesia was on fire (burning rain forests) which wasn't good for Indonesia or the surrounding countries, but did produce glorious sunsets. As I was enjoying the ambiance, an Australian gent came up and asked me if I could design a small web site for him. I questioned him, and established that he was involved in the yacht business. He and a partner were running cruises and wanted to sell the cruises on the net. He needed web pages, with a form to submit for orders. This looked good. So, I quoted a fee, negotiated a bit, and was hired to do the job. I put up some pages with lovely (retouched) pictures of the yacht, and a form that could be submitted by potential clients for reservation dates and price quotes. Everyone was happy.
Two months later, the gentleman returned.
His partner in the venture was German, he said, and had decided he wanted German pages online as well as English. "No problem", said I, "if he writes out the German for me" (my German is understandable, but limited to simple stuff such as: "if you try that again I'll slap your face off"). He told me his partner would do the text. I told him just have his partner send it, and I'd put up German pages (for a small fee of course). So he sent the German, and I did the pages, with a form in German. The form had the usual buttons at the bottom - "Submit" and "Reset" - which the partner had sent me no terms for, so I left them as they were.
The "Submit" button was evidently a problem. The next thing I knew, I was faced with a slightly embarrassed Aussie, who was trying to explain in polite terms why the term "Submit" was not acceptable in German. Seems the Germans only use it in the "give in" sense. I never did establish whether the problem was the English word, or whatever it normally translated to in German. Evidently it had a kinky meaning; or his partner had a very dirty mind and couldn't see anything other than the kinky meaning.
I tried to keep a straight face, not very successfully, and changed the "Submit" button on the German form to the German word for "Send". After that, I'm afraid my sense of humor got the better of me. The program I used for the form had a from field which could be changed. From then on, his forms were sent to him by The Web Mistress. The Aussie chuckled, the German laughed, and I've been a Web Mistress since.
But I still can't click a submit button without snickering.