8 ms·
A museum dedicated to mistranslated Japanese phrases
- boomboomsubban 4y agoSomebody from Duolingo turned engrish.com into a museum exhibit? I guess sites over twenty years old now count as museum worthy history.
- mitchdoogle 4y ago
- JasonFruit 4y agoPointing out that Duolingo has taken an old website and turned its content into a marketing gimmick/"museum" before it's even had time to grow cold isn't really "self-centered snobbery," "bringing misery onto others" because "the world… revolve[s] around you." I can't help but feel like your response evinces a worse attitude than the one you're responding to.
- joxel 4y agoGuys I’ve found the most ironic comment on HN
- radicalbyte 4y agoWait until we find out that it was written by the person who did the copy-pasting :-)
- boomboomsubban 4y agoI have no idea how you took any of this from me finding it interesting that Duolingo turned a website created in 1996 into a museum exhibit.
- Tade0 4y agoI'm happy to see engrish.com still alive and well after all those years.
- yamazakiwi 4y agoI'll never forget the Engrish.com shirt that says "I hate myself, and I want to die" with a rainbow and hearts. The first time I saw it I laughed all the dopamine out of my body Edit: I found it https://store.engrish.com/products/i-hate-myself-and-i-want-to-die-t-shirt https://store.engrish.com/products/i-hate-myself-and-i-want-...
- wodenokoto 4y agoThe first picture literally translate to "Please use the bathroom cleanly", where the translator pulled the word "urinate" from is anyones guess. In the second picture, I believe that if you hanged "ha" to "ga" in Japanese, the translation would be correct. "ha/ga" are notoriously difficult for learners of Japanese (so it is with great fear I point towards differences in their meaning), but I wonder what mix-up caused the weird translation, since I doubt the translator had trouble understanding the Japanese text ....
- tjpnz 4y ago>The first picture literally translate to "Please use the bathroom cleanly", where the translator pulled the word "urinate" from is anyones guess. I like to imagine some burned out English teacher taking on these jobs for a laugh.
- eloisant 4y agoYes, unlike some of the others it really reads like something a native speaker would write
- jtvjan 4y agoは(wa) is a case marker which makes something the topic of the sentence. Topic isn't strictly analogous to subject in English. The verb is "not eat". If the topic was "children", then the topic would be the subject when translated ('Children は not eat' -> "Children [must] not eat"). But if the topic was, say, "candy", it would instead map onto object in English ('Candy は not eat' -> "[Someone must] not eat candy"). Perhaps the translator was not aware that this flexibility does not exist in English.
- dkdbejwi383 4y agoCan you provide a better translation for the whole "not eat" example? I'm still not sure what the intended meaning is.
- 4y ago
- ggm 4y agoI'd be more interested in back translation, explanation of how mangled English attended translation into non English words. Anos/Años would be one of the classics
- causi 4y ago"My potato has 47 assholes"
- mauvehaus 4y agoWhat a coincidence, so does my pope! My wife once made the mistake of wising somebody a happy asshole instead of a happy birthday. Missing context, a hilarious YouTube video I can't find. The difference between year and asshole and potato and pope is an accent mark. Anos: asshole. Años: years.
- staticautomatic 4y agoI prefer 100 Anuses of Solitude
- loloquwowndueo 4y agoN and ñ are entirely distinct letters with different sounds - that’s not a translation problem but a typo. As long as you’re talking about Spanish, it’s the same as confusing cajones and cagones.
- wheybags 4y ago"Please urinate with precision and elegance" is pretty good though, if I ran a bar I'd be tempted to hang that over the urinals. Gets a laugh, and gets the point across.
- JasonFruit 4y agoI might go with "precision and panache," though.
- dvh 4y ago"Do not dumb here, no dumb area"
- exabrial 4y agoFor sale here by my favorite Canadian Redneck Youtuber: https://www.etsy.com/shop/AvEwerkz https://www.etsy.com/shop/AvEwerkz
- Baeocystin 4y ago...available in sticker form at AvE's shop! https://www.etsy.com/shop/AvEwerkz https://www.etsy.com/shop/AvEwerkz
- Jorengarenar 4y ago>When coffee is all gone. >It's over. Mistranslation or not, it has turned out into beautiful short form of poetry.
- YurgenJurgensen 4y agoWithout context, it's still a reasonable translation. I guess the idiomatic English in that situation would be "When the coffee is gone, it's gone.", or maybe "Refills of coffee will not be provided".
- alistairSH 4y agoI’d love to see the original setting. Was the sign intended to tell the consumer that no fresh coffee would be made, or that there are no free refills? The museum setting (in front of an empty coffee maker) implies the first, but I suspect the second was intended?
- projektfu 4y agoIt says, when this coffee has run out, it is finished. Basically, this pot will not be refilled. I can imagine at a hotel where there is free coffee in the lobby but just in the morning.
- layer8 4y agoIt’s the coffee-pot equivalent of “while supplies last”.
- naniwaduni 4y agoHonestly, the only mistranslation here is the extraneous full stop after the first clause. Replace it with a comma and it becomes a serviceable, if odd-sounding, English sentence that conveys the correct meaning.
- blululu 4y ago“Everything not saved will be lost forever” - Nintendo Cartridge. Somehow we block out poetry in our own language, but translation it can pass through as a translation.
- mindvirus 4y agoI remember seeing years ago an interview with a Japanese clothing designer. When the interviewer said the text on his shirt didn't make sense, he replied "I know, but it looks cool and it sounds cool." Respect.
- totetsu 4y agoYeah. besides something aimed at visitors from say a train operator that is translated so badly its give the wrong information, these are not a problem. English words are used by Japanese speakers on Japan to express something to other Japanese speakers, and even if it doesnt follow rules a native speaker of english would expect, thats not a problem, because they're not the audience.
- xyzelement 4y agoI noticed in Tokyo that a lot of businesses are named after two seemingly random English words.
- kridsdale1 4y agoGames too. Bravely Default
- yamazakiwi 4y agoBravely Second: End Layer
- mc32 4y agoKinda like when Non-East Asians ask for an (East Asian character)-tattoo and the Tattoo artist just goes with the flow.
- whataboutismme 4y agoWell, the people that created the 'superdry' clothing brand did this just the other way around.
- gpderetta 4y agoTsk; when doing translations make sure to cover all your base.
- mastersummoner 4y agoI live in a predominantly Chinese area of a major US city, with many people who speak virtually no English and many stores dedicated to catering to them. Including clothing stores. The amount of engrish I see on the shirts and jackets of people walking around is a wonder to behold.
- mjklin 4y ago“I shall assume that you, the reader, are learning to translate into your language of habitual use, since that is the only way you can translate naturally, accurately and with maximum effectiveness. In fact, however, most translators do translate out of their own language ('service' translation) and contribute greatly to many people's hilarity in the process.” - From “A Textbook of Translation” by Peter Newmark
- mauvehaus 4y agoIronically, this itself reads like a translation. I don't feel like most native English speakers would express this so elaborately or with so many phrases interjected with commas. I am utmostly certain that such phrases, that mark the writing as a refined specimen, go by a proper name of their own. I write at great remove from my most recent grammar lessons, and so their name does not fall easily to hand at this time.
- YurgenJurgensen 4y agoThe author in question was born in 1916, and the book appears to be from 1988. I suppose the past truly is a foreign country, even if that past isn't that long ago.
- mauvehaus 4y agoWow. That's maybe 100 years newer than I'dve guessed. It sounds almost Victorian in its phrasing. Before any English folks start sharpening their torches and pitchforks, I speak the bastardized rustic version of your tongue in the USA. Apologies if I can't tell Victorian English from Elizabethan (II) English.
- jansan 4y agoWhen I lived in Tokyo in 1997 I reveived a Sony Beans Walkman as a gift from my gym for introducing a new member. The case was made of phosphorescent material and the packaging said: Grow in the dark Here is one for sale on ebay, where you can see the text: https://www.ebay.com/itm/284336328354 https://www.ebay.com/itm/284336328354
- zoomablemind 4y agoI guess to keep it at pocket-size, one must always carry a flashlight to illuminate the pocket. Otherwise, I'd imagine the Walkman would transform into a full blown cassette deck! Wonder of Japanese technology.
- jansan 4y agoRight, imagine carrying that in the pcoket of your jeans. "Is that a boombox in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?"
- eatbitseveryday 4y ago> The exhibition is actually a publicity campaign from language learning app Duolingo.
- tsukikage 4y agoDisney wishes you all a very copyrights https://www.flickr.com/photos/toothycat/480460676/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/toothycat/480460676/
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- VyseofArcadia 4y agoI stayed with a Japanese colleague for a few days once. Lovely people, and I'm very grateful they were willing to host a clueless foreigner when they already had two toddlers in the house. The adults had both gone to college in Canada, so they had mostly great English, but every once in a while they'd say something completely insane. For example, when trying to express to me that his bathroom was carpeted and men should urinate sitting down, he wrote in an email, "Please don't be sitting in pee!"
- christkv 4y agoOne of the classic sites https://engrish.com/ https://engrish.com/
- aaron695 4y ago
- insane_dreamer 4y agohaven't visited in years, but I used to very much enjoy engrish.com There's less of this sort of thing these days; but years ago, not only in Japan but also China, it was everywhere.
- kazinator 4y agoThe translation of the coffee one is not actually bad; it's partly weird because the original is weird. It is saying that something is over as soon as the coffee runs out (maybe some demo of the coffee or machine or something). It's hard to understand why another pot couldn't be brewed if there is continued interest.
- asiachick 4y agoit's pretty clear in Japanese if hard to translate. I means "this is all the coffee we will be providing. when it's gone there will be no more" (as in don't ask for more coffee. We made one pot and that's it)
- exabrial 4y agoPre-pandemic, I worked for Alibaba and traveled to China multiple times. I actually greatly enjoyed the mistranslations on signs and billboards. Not in a mean 'Im-better-than-thou' way, but as a point of reflection to a lot of the weird things and phrases _I_ use that are objectively sorta strange. Mistranslations are often eccentric and oddly eloquent in their own regard. I took as many pictures of them as I could and they're some of my favorite parts of traveling in Asia. Here are a few classics in my collection, my favorite being the dinner menu complete with an "Explosives" section: * https://ibb.co/P6VBtTL https://ibb.co/P6VBtTL * https://ibb.co/dcWqqNy https://ibb.co/dcWqqNy * https://ibb.co/PFVBCbt https://ibb.co/PFVBCbt Side note: I discovered when I used "mistranslations" to speak to non-native speakers overseas, they actually found it far easier to understand me than if I spoke "proper" english. Some of the language concepts (conjugation, verb tense) we have in English don't seem to exist in same forms as Asian languages.
- sinuhe69 4y agoI checked with Google Translate and it did all the phrases right. Quite impressive!