Thursday, August 11, 2005

It‘s appearance beautify

I've always been a fan of what used to be called "Janglish" - the type of English found in the instruction books of Oriental products. (Nowadays it's more often called "Chinglish", which probably reflects an improvement in English language instruction in Japan.)
One of my favourite examples came from a Panasonic portable radio sold in the 1960s. Clearly, the translator had studied Shakespeare. In describing the transparent plastic case, he or she wrote:
"The cabinet is painted on the within, to shine beauteously on the without."
What a difference 40 years makes! Yesterday I saw a little round pocket-size USB plug converter in a local computer parts store. No Shakespeare here - this translator must have used a service like AltaVista's Babelfish or FreeTranslation.com to get a result like this:
"When you are traveling. Do you bring the very more USB cable? Is it very trable? Now, you have the flying savcer[sic] No 1, the door is throw wide open to your.”
Update 2010-02-11: We just bought some mandarin oranges individually wrapped in clear plastic pockets, each printed with the message below, spelled, punctuated and formatted exactly as shown:
MingHua mandarin is Orange,contain
of protein,sugar,vitamin and inorganic
salts etc,sorts of composition,especia
lly contains rich maize element, Vc,Vp,
and carotene,Resistant to cancet,he-
alth spleen,moisten lung,relieve a co-
ugh,it‘s appearance beautify,juice sa-
vory,flesh delicious,Not only is nouri-
shing product,but also is preserve yo-
ur health.It is good foodsfor health.
They are delicious!

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