一字千金？

以下是从报上关于联想电脑的报道中摘录出来的几段：

There have been challenges bridging the East-West divide, Mr. Amelio [CEO of Lenovo] admitted.
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As an example, he pointed to the first meeting of the company's two design teams, one from Beijing and the other from Raleigh [in the U.S.]. “Talk about oil and vinegar,” he said.
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The intervention eventually worked, but not without some language problems, he said.

When someone from the Western team said they needed a common design element in both their commercial and consumer lines to enforce the brand, there was a stalemate for hours. People were confused and didn't understand each other until someone looked up the translation of “common” and realized the word means “uninteresting and boring” in Mandarin.

不难猜出译者将 common 译成了什么。一个词译得不贴切，浪费了许多人几个钟头的时间，一字何止值千金？