I posted this on the tshirt thread, but it might get lost in the validated ranting, so hopefully you don't mind that I post it here too.

Here, please post bad translation, etc. of any language. I have ones that are bad translations from japanese to english.

enjoy!


My pal lived in Japan for two years, and while there she a young guy wearing this one. (keep in mind a lot of times l's and r's get mixed up)

"Crap your hands"

hehe

she got this for a friend of mine at the dollar store)...

on front: "fantastic conception ecstasy girl"
on back: "whatever. eclosion."

one she got for herself said:
"it is agreed by the force of anything. quite thing enough."

I'm not kidding. I love it when english gets all messed up.

I love this too! It is especially prevalent here in NY where everyone is scrambling to speak English, when they really cannot at all. One of my favorite signs in a Chinese Buffet: Chicken and Broccori, and my friend took a picture of a sign in a window that says: Restaurant no more. We Close. You go somewhere else.
Classic.

also, there's this:
www.engrish.com

My boyfriend brought me this great thing from the dollar store last week, it is a pack of handi-wipes made in Turkey that have 3 different scents: Fresh, Cool, and FUNNY! I was so excited because I realized I can now smell funny anytime I want!!

that is very funny. (the funny one)
I just wonder what they meant to say!

disclaimer: this thread is not to be racist, etc, or to poke fun at people. its simply to enjoy the finer things, which I think are silly tshirts and signage.

Of course there is the infamous "All Your Base Are Belong To Us". >http://www.planettribes.com/allyourbase/story.shtml

Gotta love the Engrish, Spanglish and Dinglish.

xs.

At a former job, the store carried some imported Dreamcast controllers. The warnings said things like

"Do not place into straight of sunlights"

"Do not touch mixed the mess"

ohhh engrish.com is hillarious....

my bf and i would send each other messages in engrish

THANK YOU, FloozySoozy! I've been going nuts trying to understand the "all your base" business.

Ooh, I'm glad I'm not the only one that didn't understand the all your base thing. Except even after reading the definition, I'm still not sure I entirely get it... :P

jodysomething, YUO ARE VERY OF THE WELL COME!!1!

xs.

Half of these are probably on engrish.com but I am thinking of them because I lived in Japan for a couple years too.

1. There is a second-floor bar someplace in Tokyo called "Pee."

2. Candy bar name: Crunky

3. Coffee creamer brand: Creep

4. Canned "sports drink" soda: Calpis Water

5. A couple of choice phrases used by my ex-boyfriend, a Japanese guy:

"I'm carefully this my tooth."
"Die man ceremony" (aka funeral)
"Becoming good."

There are so many more. Why were digital cameras $1500 when I lived there?? And why hadn't blogger been invented yet? My memory fails me...

Anyone have anything from the opposite side? Anglophones terribly botching another language?

A friend of mine was corrected in mexico by an amused border guard, after she told him she had nothing to declare but some butter. (I don't remember what she was trying to say).

I myself tried to speak dutch from a berlitz guide, but all I got was a very quizzical look. Apparently my mutterings were not even close to any particular words.

I once asked for a cuadrillo when I wanted a cuchara (spoon). I had a to actually pantomime before the people understood what I meant (Mexico).

The word for butter is Mantequilla (I think) does that soundlike anything she was declaring?

Also gentleman= caballero
horse = caballo

i'm sure people confuse those all the time
jt

I <3 engrish.com

Anyway I've seen a japanese cookie filled with chocolate or strawberry called "collon"...how nice and refreshing :-P

Also a consumer reports once said that the directions from a japanese translated manual showed a screw and underneath it was a word "that can't be printed in consumer reports"...hah!

finally this isn't engrish but it's similar...i was at knott's berry farm and they had these honey sticks that i guess are honey in a plastic tube that is flavored. Under the honey candy sticks sign it said "The ancient candy of the future"

if that isn't cryptic, i don't know what is...my b/f wanted to take a photo but our batteries just died so it's now just a funny anecdote...
jt

My favorite will always be a little shop in Manhattan called "Funny Cry Happy Gift."

I have some very odd Japanese stationery where all of the writing is in Japanese except the line "Baby ~ You Shut Up!"

I saw a t-shirt on the bus the other day that said something along the lines of " When the away cat, the play will miaow". Probably not the exact wording, but pretty close.

For English folks screwing up other languages, there's always the pen ad translated into Spanish that said its pens wouldn't leak and therefore you wouldn't get "embarazado," which of course means pregnant, not embarrased!

When I was in Spanish my freshman year of college, we watched "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown," and afterward we discussed it. My prof asked the class what a women usually does when her boyfriend breaks up with her, and a girl tried to say "she gets mad," but instead of "enojado" she said "mojado," which means "wet." We all got a good laugh out of it!

My fave from the Engrish site is "Cubic cube! I think sqaure is top of cool shape in the world!" I made a t-shirt for my sister with that on it. It was top of cool.

-Stephanie

I have a rubber stamp that says:

"Take a dog walking. This is happy time." with a picture of a dog

Rubber stamps from Japan rule. I have the best robot one. No words though.

I have a book called 'Japanese Jive'that is all products from Japan.

Speaking of which, I remember also seeing this great book they used to sell at Urban which was really great and farcical products out of Asia - anyone know what it's called?

I love Engrish! Rememebr the Mr. Sparkle episode of the Simpsons? "For lucky best wash, use Mr. Sparkle!"
I also love badly translated Hong Kong movies!
Oh, and I work at a university with a lot of Asian international students who call me "Lola" instead of "Laura!" I think it's super cool because a close friend nicknamed me Lola years and years ago and calls me that too.
When I was in Germany with a friend this German guy came up and started talking to us. He asked us if we were surfers because we were from California and my friend replied:
"Ich denke nicht!"
she was trying to say, "I think not," but the guy started cracking up because she really said "I don't think."

Did you see the part of Engrish.com where it tells you how to make-your-own Engrish (via an online translator)?

I turned these two sentences -- "Hello, my name is Stephanie. I like pickles."

Into this -- "Today as for my name it is stephanie where I like the pickles."

You have to try it!

*steph

I have a comic book character that solves crimes and saves the world, but only speaks dialogue that is translated from English to Japanese and back to English. He is quite funny. Any publishers of the comic books want for to give writing deal to young crazy female?

I used to collect all these Korean stationery sets, some of which have wacky little sayings with them. I always liked "My heart is like a singing bird, whose nest is in a watered shoot." Really, now?

Before Internet forwards were as popular as they are now, someone gave me a paper copy of a list of signs abusing English that they printed from someone's website (probably about 8 or 9 years ago). Here are a few of my favorites:

In a Leipzig elevator: "Do not enter the lift backwards, and only when lit up."

In a Paris hotel elevator: "Please leave your values at the front deks."

On the door of a Moscow hotel room: "If this is your first visit to the USSR, you are welcome to it."

In a clothing shop in Brussels: "Mourning and sportswear."

Hee!

There is a passage in the great book, "Lost in a Good Book," the followup to "The Eyre Affair." In it, Thursday goes to Osaka and sees all the youths wearing T-shirts with Engrish on them.

"As is popular in the Far East, many t-shirts and jackets have English writing upon them-some of them making sense, but others just collections of words that must appear as fashionable to the Japanese youth as kanji appears to us."

Mr.Pants has a funny collection of artifacts that contain engrish. Here is the "little poop friend" http://www.misterpants.com/junk/unchikun.html

A confession: On my bedroom wall are three stretched "antiqued canvases" (actually tea-stained dish towels, which turned out great by the way) on which I painted the Chinese characters for Peace, Love and Understanding.

Peace and Love are, I think, accurate - I've seen the same ones with those meanings in many places. The "Understanding" one, however, I had to look up, finding only one example online. The character was printed in a modern, un-calligraphic font, and so I was left to guess what it would look like if painted with a brush. I don't think I was too successful.

I'm sure anyone who reads Chinese would look at it and laugh their ass off, just as I'm doing at Coming Candy and Outrageous Bay Leaf Power.