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Whether it be on shirts, official forms, or advertisements, Japan has plenty of examples of things getting lost in Japanese to English translation. While there's certainly nothing wrong with a non-native speaker of English making a mistake or a machine language translation malfunctioning, sometimes you can't help but laugh at the result of far too literal translations. In order to highlight some of the more humorous translations gone awry as an educational experience, Language learning app Duolingo recently launched The Museum of Wonky English (MOWE)--a pop-up museum in Tokyo dedicated to mistranslated Japanese to English phrases.
The pop-up museum was hosted at Harajuku's UltraSuperNew Gallery from November 29 to December 7, and while the museum focused on masterpiece mistranslations such as “Please urinate with precision and elegance”, “When coffee is all gone. It’s over”, and "Crap your hands", Duolingo says they hope that shining a light on the errors with some levity could help people appreciate the nuance and difficulty of translation, and perhaps look into learning a new language.
When coffee is all gone. It’s over.
Crap your hands.
Please do not eat children and elderly.
While the museum's run is over, it can hopefully return in the future for another pop-up exhibition featuring even more great mistranslations--as well as a chance to get some English-gone-wrong merch.
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- External Link
- https://grapee.jp/en/
15 Comments
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Patrick
Whatever happened to engrish.com? No recent posts there…
garypen
They have a Facebook page. It's quite active.
Makoto Shimizu
That's a good idea, to create a Museum! Cheaper than bricks and mortar museums would be the virtual ones. Other languages could be also contemplated with the usually funny mistakes, Brazilian Portuguese translations also have very funny hilarious versions.
Desert Tortoise
Old Japanese car and motorcycle repair manuals could be fun reading :) English translations of items for sale on Yahoo! Japan Auctions or Mercari can be funny as well.
Desert Tortoise
Who could forget the children's clothing store in Taipei called "Turd Baby" ?
japancat
The moral of the story is....Always check with a native speaker before going to print. LOL !
Aly Rustom
I remember once reading "Do you ever run after your nose?" and I was like WTF??? Then someone later explained that the question was "Do you have a runny nose?"
My personal favorite one was in a toilet at a ryokan in Hyogo. It read:
Dear our valued guests. We would like to welcome you and we apologize for the inconvenience but we humbly request that you please remember to flush the toilet after pissing or shitting.
Thank you for your kind consideration.
Stephen Chin
Please urinate with precision and elegance?
I always do. Do you? If not, why not?
Mocheake
Excellent idea! I have so many saved I could start my own museum. One of my personal favorites is from a stairway sign I saw right outside Yokosuka navy base back in the 1990s. It went like this: If you stools here we call a police.
Desert Tortoise
A sign at the concierge's desk of a fancy Singapore hotel, referring to their laundry service said "For best service drop trousers here".
mb96768
I never understand why the Japanese almost NEVER have their translations reviewed by a native speaker. The most common and simplest example are signs in front of restaurants and other businesses, "CLOSE". Even Tokyo Metro gets it wrong, "Please be careful as the train goes over a curve" and "Thanks for boarding". It's obvious they used a direct translation of the Japanese word, which is the wrong word. It's not a big deal if communication is not affected, e.g. you want a "hambaagaa" but get a "hamburg".
tooheysnew
They mostly do.
the problem is the Japanese oyaji salaryman who thinks his English is better than the native speaker who did the translation. He will change the English translation to what he thinks is correct, but mostly it isn’t.
Aly Rustom
I'm glad. Makes for some great entertainment.
starpunk
In elementary school music class we had that sing-song that went 'Clap, clap, clap your hands! Clap your hands together....', and as a juvenile joke parody there was 'Crap, crap, crap your pants!...'.
And then there's the true story about a revolutionary videogame that Masaya Nakaguma had ready to go in late 1979. It was originally Romanized as 'PUCKMAN' and some officials told him to alter the Romanizing so that vandals wouldn't paint or scratch an 'F' over the 'P'. Most of the world knows the game as 'PAC-MAN' and history was made.