A museum dedicated to mistranslated Japanese phrases | Hacker News Reader

A museum dedicated to mistranslated Japanese phrases

spoon-tamago.com

106 pointszdw76 comments

"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.

I might go with "precision and panache," though.

I 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.

Well, the people that created the 'superdry' clothing brand did this just the other way around.

Yeah. 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.

I noticed in Tokyo that a lot of businesses are named after two seemingly random English words.

Kinda like when Non-East Asians ask for an (East Asian character)-tattoo and the Tattoo artist just goes with the flow.

Games too.

Bravely Default

Bravely Second: End Layer

Somebody from Duolingo turned engrish.com into a museum exhibit? I guess sites over twenty years old now count as museum worthy history.

I'm happy to see engrish.com still alive and well after all those years.

I'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-...

The 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 ....

To the Japanese, languages such as English are legalistic and rudely direct and specific. Japanese tends to be ambiguous and the Japanese tend to not directly say what they mean, since that would be rude and exclude the listener. Translating Japanese to English usually requires creatively interpreting the meaning of the kanji characters and the intent of the writer. Teasing out the meaning of some complicated kanji can be difficult, so it seems pretty common to just make something up that sounds reasonable. I've worked on translations that were over 60% completely made up.

I agree that "please urinate with precision and elegance" is more direct than "please use the bathroom cleanly," but it's kind of funny that the translators assumed English speakers would expect the very direct version.

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.

Learning about は (wa) was my rabbit hole into Japanese particles and how there is not a super clear analogue in English. Apparently, sometimes western learners of Japanese think it’s some form of the verb “to be” which we use everywhere in American English (in British English, they tend to use more of “to have” than we do, which is kind of a running theme among western and southern European languages as well).

This is an interesting case where systems like Google translate break down because there is no clear meaning without context.

However when you learn about も (mo), another Japanese particle, it used very similarly to the word “too” or “also” in English, e.g. I (watashi) am also (mo) fine (genki desu).

There is also の (no) which indicates possession in the same way we use “of” or in other European languages, “de”, “di”, “von”, “van”.

I just find language endlessly fascinating.

"Please do not eat, children and elderly."

Can you provide a better translation for the whole "not eat" example? I'm still not sure what the intended meaning is.

"Small kids and elderly people: please don’t eat [these]."

Probably in front of mochi or some other choking hazard.

I think it's some kind of food that might be risky for weaker people, e.g. children and old people.

In the video they had jello, maybe there's a choking hazard

Children and the elderly should refrain from eating.

> Children won't eat

> The Candy won't eat

Do you notice a difference?

There are many verbs where this has become possible recently (the code won't build?) but eat isn't one of them.

>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.

Yes, unlike some of the others it really reads like something a native speaker would write

> where the translator pulled the word "urinate" from is anyones guess.

How do you use the bathroom?

With precision and elegance, naturally.

Pre-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/dcWqqNy

* 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.

“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

Ironically, 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.

The 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.

Wow. 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.

I 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!"

Tsk; when doing translations make sure to cover all your base.

What you say? All your base are belong to us!

You have no chance to translate make your time.

Somebody set up us the bomb.

The pipes are broken!

Take off every Zig!

For great justice.

>When coffee is all gone.

>It's over.

Mistranslation or not, it has turned out into beautiful short form of poetry.

“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.

Without 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".

I’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?

It 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.

It’s the coffee-pot equivalent of “while supplies last”.

A haïku to leave before seppuku. No more coffee is indeed catastrophic.

Reminds me of the out of coffee scene from Airplane 2.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bbv5B71KmkA

Honestly, 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.

> The exhibition is actually a publicity campaign from language learning app Duolingo.

I 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.

"Do not dumb here, no dumb area"

For sale here by my favorite Canadian Redneck Youtuber: https://www.etsy.com/shop/AvEwerkz

...available in sticker form at AvE's shop! https://www.etsy.com/shop/AvEwerkz

I'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

"My potato has 47 assholes"

What 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.

I prefer 100 Anuses of Solitude

N 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.

They are indeed separate letters, but this may not be clear to English speakers who are not used to diacritics.

Not a diacritic, ñ is a different symbol by itself. U and ü would be a different case. Silent under gue, gui, que and qui, and not, as in pingüino.

Hmm, wikipedia (admittedly english wikipedia) considers it a diacritic despite the fact that it's considered it's own letter. Is there a different generic term for "typographic mark above the main body of a letter"?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diacritic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%91

The 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.

it'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)

Disney wishes you all a very copyrights

https://www.flickr.com/photos/toothycat/480460676/

When 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

I 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.

Right, imagine carrying that in the pcoket of your jeans. "Is that a boombox in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?"

haven'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.

One of the classic sites https://engrish.com/

I checked with Google Translate and it did all the phrases right. Quite impressive!

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