[HN Gopher] A museum dedicated to mistranslated Japanese phrases
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A museum dedicated to mistranslated Japanese phrases
Author : zdw
Score : 99 points
Date : 2022-12-07 02:42 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.spoon-tamago.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.spoon-tamago.com)
| Jorengarenar wrote:
| >When coffee is all gone.
|
| >It's over.
|
| Mistranslation or not, it has turned out into beautiful short
| form of poetry.
| galgot wrote:
| A haiku to leave before seppuku. No more coffee is indeed
| catastrophic.
| torcete wrote:
| Reminds me of the out of coffee scene from Airplane 2.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bbv5B71KmkA
| blululu wrote:
| "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.
| naniwaduni wrote:
| 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.
| YurgenJurgensen wrote:
| 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".
| alistairSH wrote:
| 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?
| projektfu wrote:
| 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.
| layer8 wrote:
| It's the coffee-pot equivalent of "while supplies last".
| gpderetta wrote:
| Tsk; when doing translations make sure to cover all your base.
| drewzero1 wrote:
| The pipes are broken!
| tmtvl wrote:
| Somebody set up us the bomb.
| sasaf5 wrote:
| Take off every Zig!
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| You have no chance to translate make your time.
| Prunkton wrote:
| What you say? All your base are belong to us!
| mjklin wrote:
| For great justice.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Somebody from Duolingo turned engrish.com into a museum exhibit?
| I guess sites over twenty years old now count as museum worthy
| history.
| mitchdoogle wrote:
| joxel wrote:
| Guys I've found the most ironic comment on HN
| radicalbyte wrote:
| Wait until we find out that it was written by the person
| who did the copy-pasting :-)
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| I 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.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| Pointing 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.
| Tade0 wrote:
| I'm happy to see engrish.com still alive and well after all
| those years.
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| 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!"
| ggm wrote:
| I'd be more interested in back translation, explanation of how
| mangled English attended translation into non English words.
|
| Anos/Anos would be one of the classics
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| N and n 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.
| nicoburns wrote:
| They are indeed separate letters, but this may not be clear
| to English speakers who are not used to diacritics.
| anthk wrote:
| Not a diacritic, n is a different symbol by itself. U and u
| would be a different case. Silent under gue, gui, que and
| qui, and not, as in pinguino.
| nicoburns wrote:
| 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
| causi wrote:
| "My potato has 47 assholes"
| staticautomatic wrote:
| I prefer 100 Anuses of Solitude
| mauvehaus wrote:
| 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. Anos: years.
| tsukikage wrote:
| Disney wishes you all a very copyrights
|
| https://www.flickr.com/photos/toothycat/480460676/
| [deleted]
| dvh wrote:
| "Do not dumb here, no dumb area"
| mastersummoner wrote:
| 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.
| mjklin wrote:
| "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 wrote:
| 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.
| YurgenJurgensen wrote:
| 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.
| mauvehaus wrote:
| 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.
| jansan wrote:
| 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
| zoomablemind wrote:
| 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.
| jansan wrote:
| 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?"
| mindvirus wrote:
| 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.
| totetsu wrote:
| 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.
| xyzelement wrote:
| I noticed in Tokyo that a lot of businesses are named after two
| seemingly random English words.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| Games too.
|
| Bravely Default
| mc32 wrote:
| Kinda like when Non-East Asians ask for an (East Asian
| character)-tattoo and the Tattoo artist just goes with the
| flow.
| whataboutismme wrote:
| Well, the people that created the 'superdry' clothing brand did
| this just the other way around.
| wheybags wrote:
| "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 wrote:
| I might go with "precision and panache," though.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| 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.
| kazinator wrote:
| 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.
| eatbitseveryday wrote:
| > The exhibition is actually a publicity campaign from language
| learning app Duolingo.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| 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 ....
| tjpnz wrote:
| >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 wrote:
| Yes, unlike some of the others it really reads like something
| a native speaker would write
| GartzenDeHaes wrote:
| 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.
| ComplexSystems wrote:
| 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.
| jtvjan wrote:
| ha(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 ha not
| eat' -> "Children [must] not eat"). But if the topic was, say,
| "candy", it would instead map onto object in English ('Candy ha
| not eat' -> "[Someone must] not eat candy").
|
| Perhaps the translator was not aware that this flexibility does
| not exist in English.
| dkdbejwi383 wrote:
| Can you provide a better translation for the whole "not eat"
| example? I'm still not sure what the intended meaning is.
| mathieuh wrote:
| I think it's some kind of food that might be risky for
| weaker people, e.g. children and old people.
| iopq wrote:
| In the video they had jello, maybe there's a choking
| hazard
| systoll wrote:
| "Small kids and elderly people: please don't eat [these]."
|
| Probably in front of mochi or some other choking hazard.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| Children and the elderly should refrain from eating.
| naniwaduni wrote:
| "Please do not eat, children and elderly."
| samtho wrote:
| Learning about ha (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 mo (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 no (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.
| posterboy wrote:
| > 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.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| > where the translator pulled the word "urinate" from is
| anyones guess.
|
| How do you use the bathroom?
| mauvehaus wrote:
| With precision and elegance, naturally.
| christkv wrote:
| One of the classic sites https://engrish.com/
| aaron695 wrote:
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