Do You Speak Engrish? When Good Products Have Bad Names
Yet another fun thing about traveling to another country is seeing bad English translations. Japan leads the category (again) in this one! The category has its own name: “Engrish” and there’s no shortage of examples of it online. Here are some of my own pictures of Engrish from my trip to Japan, along with some links to additional endless “Engrish!”
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Unfortunately Named Products and Services…
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| Thank goodness it doesn’t taste like its name. It was actually a delightful milk chocolate, kind of like 3 Musketeers bar. |
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| I read somewhere that the kanji text says “koron” so it’s even funnier that the English translation mirrors how the Japanese pronounce American “R”s. |
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| Zombies are frequent clients. |
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Strange Descriptions
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| I wonder if they have a lot of “pity purchases” for this apple juice? It’s just so sad! |
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| This sign reminds of the joke that there are people so rich and busy they hire people to chew their food for them. |
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| What’s funny about this is the translation from English to Japanese. It’s for the movie, “Legally Blond” with Reese Witherspoon. My brother said that the movie translated to, “Cutie Blond Happy Max!!” |
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Just Strange…I’m not sure what to call this category. But everywhere in Japan there were T-shirts, bags and other items with whole little stories on them. It’s almost like they took some bad english marketing copy and ran it through the Babelfish translator online a few times back and forth between Japanese and English. It’s just non-sensical. Enjoy! |
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There was a little bit of camera shake when I took this so here’s what the bag says:It is a friend WHOLLY. An animal and relations will become good. Animals are alive with nature. |
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| This story sounds like a cross between a romance novel (bury a face in a chest) and E.T. (the fingertip which touched it and the laughter). |
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| This isn’t that funny of a bad translation (“material for decoration cake”), but the concept is funny. Apparently the Japanese like everything ready-made – which means they won’t bake a cake from scratch, but they WILL buy the layers pre-made, and just assemble it with the frosting! |
Is your whistle whetted? Now check out the premier Engrish spot: www.engrish.com, or the
Engrish Flickr Group.
Tags: asia, culture ethnicity, eastern studies, japan, travel
