All your base are STILL belong to us!

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Ok, so today I got given a tire-shaped clock. Cool, huh? But the best thing is definitely the box it came in.

"ELEGANCE CLOCK", it said. "Simulation a true style".

I thought something sounded wrong, but what the hey, it was obviusly a cheap thing. Then, in a fit of boredom, I started reading the WARNINGs, of which there are two:

Use the batteries wrong will cause the batteries broken or the pile out, And do damage to the people and property.

I knew what I was in for, and it just kept going downhill, just as as my laughter kept getting increasingly harder to control.

Do pay attention to the followings:
1. Do not install the batteries with the wrong polarity, and the supply terminals are not to be short-circuited.
2. Only batteries of the same or equivalent type as recommended are to be used.
3. Do not mix old and new batteries.
4. Do not burn the batteries or put batteries.in a high temperature circumstances.
5. Replace the exhausted batteries as soon as possible.

Sure, some are funnier than others, but I never expected to find any of this. I must have thought it was a urban legend or something. Anyway, it was my first.

WARNING:

1. Please don't place it in the following place.
a) nearby strong vibration
b) in the dusty play.
2. Please do not touch it movement
3. Please don't clean it case by using paint thinner or other chemical materials. Neuter soap or cleanser as cleaning liquid is recommendable.
4. Please change the battery once a year. Exhausted battery may leak and damage your product.

Ok, so may it's not funny to you - in which case, you just had to be there.

I actually find these quite funny - in some site or other, I read a sign outside a chinese something-or-other shop:

CUSTOMERS WILL BE EXECUTED IN ORDER

So I thought, this wouldn't be any worse than the Crap Joke thread. So hey, feel free to add to the collection (Geoffkhan, I'm looking at you!).

RELATIVELY OFF-TOPIC: http://www.allowe.com/Humor/book/Actual%20Courtroom%20Testimony.htm This is my favourite collection of this "whoops" tyoe of humour, even if it ain't all true. My favourite one HAS to be:

47. Q: When he went, had you gone and had she, if she wanted to and were able, for the time being excluding all the restraints on her not to go, gone also, would he have brought you, meaning you and she, with him to the station?


Q: Objection. That question should be taken out and shot.

[Tuomas]

That like yeah, www.engrish.com or something?

[GarageGothic]

Reminds me of the computer translated instructions for a lamp sold in a Danish supermarket some years back (apologies for the need for elaborate explanation). The instructions were supposed to read:

"Røare aldrig ved en halogen [-pære]" ("Never touch a halogen light bulb")

But something had gone wrong with their auto-proofreading, I assume in the same way that Word sometimes suggests totally arbitrary corrections to spelling mistakes. So instead it read:

"Røare aldrig ved en haleneger" (Literally, "Never touch a tail-negro", a derogatory term from the early 20th century, roughly the equivalent of "pickaninny")

Edit: Damn txt-style spelling corrector. The "are" after "Rø" was just supposed to be the letter "r".

[Stupot]

Engrish is great.
In Tokyo, my nearest 99 Yen shop had this sign in the window.


Smorking in shops is frowned upon in Japan.

[Vince Twelve]

I have started offering my services free of charge to the owners of a number of restaurants and stores that I frequent here in Japan as a proofreader.  The problem is that it's considered cool to have English on something, no matter what it says.  That's why you see people walking around with shirts that say "Pet my beaver!" or some other often-misspelled nonsense.

Too many business owners will go out and spend a ton of money on signs, fancy printed menu's, business cards, etc with terrible laughable English on them.  It's really not that hard to find someone who speaks English fluently.  Especially on the island I live on where there's an American military base.

One French restaurant I went to a few months ago spent what must have been several hundred dollars on this engraved pillar outside the entrance that had the restaurant's name on it along with a slogan: "Freash eatery, relax frendry service.  Come In."  Spelling and capitalization exactly like that.  For something so prominent and expensive, couldn't you find one of the thousands of native English speakers that live on this island for a quick proofread?  Or maybe, you know, don't use English?

The straw that broke the camel's back was when the owner of one of my favorite restaurants, Yona, opened a second restaurant named Yona Labolotoly.

First off, I told him, "Laboratory" is spelled with 'r's not 'l's, so that huge sign you put up out front: bad.  All those business cards and menus: bad.  All those newspaper ads: bad.  Second of all, "Laboratory" doesn't exactly sound like a great place to eat.  I know it's Japan and that 95% of their customers won't even notice, but still, a 15 minute conversation with me and I can fix all the spelling and grammar mistakes in your menu, ads, signs, and even restaurant name.

A year from now, all my favorite restaurants will have impeccable English on their menus and signs.  Mark my words.

[SpacePirateCaine]

Heh, the 'Living in Japan' crowd crawls out of their respective holes to share their linguistic horror stories about the land of the rising sun. May as well add my newest. I really don't take many photos anymore of odd language that I see, but I thought I'd share one I took in Nara when my parents were visiting for my University Graduation.



Not particularly odd at first glance, but I love how a comma can change the entire feel of a sentence.

No Smoking: Do not smoke here.
No, Smoking: I refuse, as I am busy smoking. (Kind of like Homer Simpson saying 'Can't talk, eating.'

It's kind of like the 'Eats shoots and leaves' versus 'Eats, shoots and leaves" sentences. Japan's a fun place to be a native English speaker in.

--This thread addresses even more odd language stuff we've run into in the past.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Wow. All those symbols to mean "No Smoking"?

Sorry if this thread threads on old ground, but I really am enjoying the ensuing posts.

And thanks for the link!

[Barbarian]

Living in Hong Kong these last few years, I see lots of "Engrish", or here you might call it "Chinglish" (Chinese English). If I think about it, I'll try to take a snap-shot of some funny examples.

One sign that I found really funny, though perhaps not really intentionally, is the name of a Doctor's office near where I sometimes work (funny enough, I teach Engrish, errr, I mean English as one of my jobs. As well I teach Martial Arts too).  Anyways, the sign reads: "Dr. Fuk and Ass."   

Fuk is the name of the main Doctor there I guess, and I guess the "Ass" means "Associates" or something along those lines. But, reading on the sign "Dr. Fuk and Ass." somehow brings a wry smile to my face every time I see it.

Also, again and again I hear the same common spoken mistakes from many of the locals who try to speak English.  Example, I have some students in which I sometimes say, "What's new?"  (like asking "What is new with you? What have you been up to?").  But always, they can't get that right and 99% of the time say "What news?", even as I try to correct them.  "R" and "L" sounds usually tend to be confused terribly, same with "W" and "V" sounds. So a sentience like "I like fried rice.", tends to be spoken "I rike flied lice".

[Stupot]

One of my house mates in Tokyo was a 47 year-old scouser.  He's married to a Japanese woman in Nagano, but she had sent him to Tokyo t take his driving test, telling him not to come back until he had passed it.

The poor guy had to put up with questions like this:

At an intersection of two roads crossing, the road that centerlines and lane's lines are continuously drowned in the intersection is a priority road.

No wonder it took him about 7 attrempts just to pass the first theory test (of which there are two, I believe).

[shbaz]

While my intuition tells me the huge working Hispanic population here means there's no problem with them, I often wonder what our signs and instructions in "Spanish" look like to a native speaker (in America).

Just to throw in the flip side of things..

[voh]

This hung in the window of an English Pub here in Amsterdam (for your information, welcome = welkom in dutch, so there's definitely dungrish going on).

So of course I went in and asked them how, in addition to dodgy people, they felt about dodgy English.

They made me leave