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Lost In Translation / Engrish

I used to have a clipping from the Western Mail (I think..) which said "Reagarding our recent Holiday competition, for Seattle read Settle throughout".

This ranks alongside the one read out on the News Quiz years ago to the effect that "The artist appearing tonight at the Playhouse will not be Ray Charles as advertised, but Ray Alan and Lord Charles".

Personally I wouldn't have mentioned it but just gone along to the theatre and enjoyed watching the reaction :).

BTW my fave use of peculiar English was in an Austrian hotel room: "No bringing in of the Animals".

Perhaps they'd had trouble with Eric Burdon...

Stu
 
:D :D Those were great! Reminds me of a Chinese Manicure place near me called "Do me Nails"
 
Not a translation but, there's a hairdressers near me called "Curl up and Dye"
 
Another News Quiz one:

"The court heard that the accused threatened cashiers with a gnu."

Either a typo or Fortean in the extreme!
 
Our local free rag once featured a man who'd raised a lot of money by organising a 'sponsored wank'.
The following week's apology was a positively subterranean grovel. Wish I'd kept both clips.
 
LOL :D!

There was a similar Guardian one which mentioned "Willy Wanka and the Chocolate Factory" - Private Eye is a sterling source of this stuff (from which I got the above: Private Eye's Book of Boobs).

Also therein was this (slightly off-topic but worth it): "Dr Alex Comfort, the author of The Joy of Sex, died this morning following a series of small strokes."

Knocked me sideways, that!:)
 
A relatively recent Colman Ball:

When he was asked what he thought of the female Russian weightlifters chance of a medal he replied

"Well, i saw her snatch this morning, it was pretty impressive"
 
Oh, Escargot, I'm still crying with laughter from your contribution!

My husband and I had a meal in a Lebanese restaurance which offered 'boncles chicken', which was quite delicious, but no one dared try the 'bumburgers' which were also on the menu.

Also, in a hotel in Cairo: 'a selection of tasty nipples at the bar' was on offer (the Arabs often confuse letters p and b, at least I hope they did in this instance . . .)

Carole
 
"The Japanese are the strangest, most rigidly repressed people on earth
That was certainly my first impression. Even before arriving in Japan. On the flight over I was reading a book called Fear and Trembling by a Japanese-speaking Belgian woman, AmÀlie Nothomb, about her experiences working in corporate Japan. Female employees, she tells us, were compelled in writing to abide by a number of rules, including this one: 'When you are in the bathroom for the humble purpose of relieving your bladder, you are constrained to ensure that no one will hear the trill of your stream. You should therefore flush continuously.' "

- John Carlin, Guardian
 
well, this is not lost in the translation or anything, but at a recent school play a sign was up reading:
please do not make this very proffesional production into an amature one by talking
Click to expand...

also kraftwerk's english-version lyrics are quite entertaing:"she's a model and she's looking good/I'd like to take her home it's understood"
 
I heard this one a while ago.

In (I think) the european parlianment the have a computer translation system for documents. The problem is that English expresions don't translate very well.
For example "out of sight, out of mind" was translated into German as blind idiot!!
 
Originally posted by Dark Detective
>> > Car rental brochure, Tokyo:
>> > WHEN PASSENGER OF FOOT HEAVE IN SIGHT, TOOTLE THE HORN. TRUMPET HIM MELODIOUSLY AT FIRST, BUT IF HE STILL OBSTACLES YOUR PASSAGE THEN TOOTLE HIM WITH VIGOR.
>> >


:D Why tootle at all, if not with vigor??

Thanks, DD,you made my day!
Click to expand...
 
I go the a big chinese supermarket/cash and carry now and then, and in the freezer, amongst the bags of "pigs maws" and "hens feet" I found "Vegitalian Samosas"
 
While in Mayday Hospital last week, I noticed they had a "Mobile Breast Screening Unit". Now, I know what this is of course, but it made me laugh all the same.
 
Spunky

Always thought spunk means spark of life, hence semen being called spunk, as it carries the spark of life, as it were, that kicks off the conflagration of pregnancy.
 
for me that goes in the 'new and interesting' brains store and i thank you.
 
Spark of Fire's Life, too

The reference is rooted in what my grandfather called spunk on trees, the tendrils of green/gray lichen that one can use to spark a fire, (kindling), to life, because it's always dry and easier to catch. I'd guess this is rooted in the times when most fires were started with a flint-and-metal spark.
 
Re: Something got lost in the translation!

phamous said:
Airline ticket office, Copenhagen:
WE TAKE YOUR BAGS AND SEND THEM IN ALL DIRECTIONS.
Click to expand...

Must have been an Air France office!:mad: :hmph:

Carole, whose husband's luggage was kindly lost by Air France last Christmas and all he gets by way of a response is a Gallic shrug . . .
 
Gallic Shrug

The so-called Gallic Shrug originated just about the time of the French Revolution as a response to Monsieur Guillotine's colorful headache cure.
 
Come on FraterLibre, this thread is about amusing foreigners and their weird languages, and the hilarious confusion that ensues!!!
There are other threads that deserve a serious look, but not this one for sure. :)
Let us Brits laugh at the foreigners-it's the only thing that keeps us going sometimes, on those long autumn evenings.....:(
;)
 
Typical Brits

You just don't understand Yank humor, do you? I was certainly not being serioius. Being an American, how could I?
 
Of course we understand it! We were just pointing out the discrepancies is all.
 
I was in Cornwall a few weeks back I saw a number of lorries with 'Roach Foods' written on them. I found this rather disturbing!
 
I was always quite peturbed by the differentiation between a pork Butcher and a Family Butcher :eek!!!!:

And one of my favourite foreign product names was a brand of (I think) Belgian liquorice called Nikkersdown!

Mind you, we are more than capable of mangling our own language without letting non english speakers do it for us. Where I work they have recycling bins placed around the building for various types of waste. One of these bins has a notice on it which says 'This bin will not accept printed matter' to which my response is 'Yes it will, watch'

A favourite example was in a film starring John Hurt. He is in a restaurant and lights a cigarette. His companion says "The sign says no smoking" to which he replies "No it doesn't, it says 'Thank you for not smoking' I however AM smoking, so they don't need to thank me" :D
 
Hammett

There is a scene in a Dashiell Hammett novel in which the protagonist is sitting in a bar gazing at a sign, and he comments that to kill time he was seeing how many lies he could find in those few words, what ever they were, and he was up to nine when his client interrupts him.

Factor in errors, misinterpretations, and fractured language use, and you expand things exponentially.
 
There's a mineral called Cummingtonite! Don't know much else about it but it does have an amusing name!
 
last night filling the car up with a bit of petrol, I saw a sign that explained why it wasn't worth holding up the joint for the money in the till = "Cashiers make deposits in the floor-safe".

Personally this was more information than I needed to know. It was a very small booth but you'd think they could afford to put in a toilet.
 
I read with amusement in the local rag that "the Leader of the Council regularly passes motions on the floor"
Might explain the low attendance figures.
 
I had lots of fun with that sort of thing in Mexico. Restaurants everywhere were serving "Jam and Cheese" sandwiches, and the the customs form asked "passengers to sing in the box provided"
There also used to be a Chinese restaurant near my house which sold "Crispy fried water", I never got around to ordering it though.
 
There's a Chinese take away in Lowestoft which offers crispy smoked children :cross eye
 
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