Steve Caires of Engrish.com sent me this today:





http://www.kirainet.com/english/hemorrhoids-%E7%97%94/



From Hector Garcia's A Geek in Japan:



"At first glance, it seems like a kid with a supercool sweater with a Japanese character. The problem is that the character means “hemorrhoid” in Japanese. Probably the designer confused the character , which means “samurai” and is pronounced “ji”, with the character that means “hemorrhoid” and is also pronounced “ji”… Both characters are graphically very similar but the meaning is totally different!"
Dr. Victor Mair from University of Pennsylvania sent me a link to a recent posting in the Language Log:







The Chinese on banner for "Bodies... The Exhibition" does not say "discover your body", rather "discover your honorable corpse." [More]



My father has forwarded me this news story about hilarious mistranslated signs used by Royal Caribbean Cruise Line. It appears Royal Caribbean Cruise Line did not verify the Chinese translation's accuracy and blindly trusted Google Translate.

Luckily paper signs can be reprinted, unlike tattoos.


Corned Beef Hash => "salted beef jumbled signal"


Ham and Bamboo Shoot Salad => "clumsy actor and bamboo's salad"


Garden Greens => "[botanical] garden became green color"


Chicken and Mushroom tart => "timid and rapidly grown prostitute(s)"


Regular Milk => "policy milk"
Half & Half => "secondary butter blended mixture"


Green Split Pea Soup => "green separation pea soup"


English Bacon => "English [language] cultivate root"

* Update: several readers have informed me that 培根 is an acceptable transliteration for "bacon" in Taiwan. However, the sign is still incorrect for using "English [language]", instead of "English [cuisine style]".


Creamy Italian Dressing = "butter Italy costume"

Original Story:
中式英文令人啼笑皆非 美国人英译中菜单更搞笑(图)

Language Log:
Timid and Rapidly Grown Prostitutes

from: Gunnar
to: tiangotlost@gmail.com
date: Tue, Jun 28, 2011 at 11:16 AM
subject: Funny tattoo "Ride Hard Die Free"

Hi,

I stumbled across this tattoo online, and I haven't seen on your blog before. It is supposed to say "Ride Hard Die Free" but as you can see Google Translate made a creative interpretation of the phrase. I hope you enjoy it!

http://beckmansbruk.blogg.se/2010/january/7-e-januari-1.html

Thank you for a great blog!

Regards,
Gunnar



Grammatically speaking, this tattooed phrase is Chinese, however its translation back to English is far from "Ride Hard Die Free".

Granted, 免費 does mean "free of charge", 乘坐 does mean "riding, or being passenger", does mean "hard", but or 硬模 is not verb for "die, or dying". Rather it is the noun "die" as in "die-casting" or "die-molding".

I guess this young man is quite proud and wants everyone to know he enjoys "freely shoving die-casted figurines up his ass"?

Kinky!
from: Victor H. Mair
to: Tian
date: Wed, May 25, 2011 at 7:30 PM
subject: smatter

Hanzi Smatter circa 1700

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3160



A friend of Dr. Mair sent him a
photograph of Dutch chinoiserie tile panel from the late 17th-early 18th century, and asked him to help her identify some of the curious scenes represented on it. Dr. Mair, however, was immediately drawn to the cartouche in the upper left corner.

Here is what happened...