Just obeying orders
We always have a laugh at those lovely things from Engrish.com like the one featured on TobyBo's blog recently - a sign saying "Be Dangerous" which I assume was to warn English speakers of "Danger".
Some years back we became the proud owners of a "Lucky Teapot" for the grand sum of $3. It was one of those little glass teapots with a tea infuser inside and we thought we'd make tea the proper way, instead of using tea bags. The instructions were rather interesting. Such as: Add hot water and leave for 45 min for imediat alirigt. With our temperature plumetting at the moment if we did this the only thing which would be "alirigt" would be iced tea. (OK, I know those in the US don't sympathise with 5 degrees Celcius being cold, but for us sunny Queenslanders that's starting to get chilly). The teapot actually made great tea (when left for 5 min) and I was sad when my clumsy ways meant it shattered one day. I guess the Chinese ought to know how to make tea.
Have you ever thought though what it must be like the other way around? We had a taste of this last week. Matt was doing a project about dangerous animals in Queensland. His job was to produce a brochure for tourists letting them know about the dangers of the tiger snake and how to treat snake bite. He decided to produce the information in different languages and thought he'd be clever and use an internet translation site.
When Anika read the brochure's French though she started laughing fit to burst. Apparently "Watch out for them [snakes] all year in Queensland and on southern summer nights," translates as, "Watch out for Queenslanders, especially on southern summer nights."
In light of the "Be Dangerous" sign I guess we're just obeying orders.
Some years back we became the proud owners of a "Lucky Teapot" for the grand sum of $3. It was one of those little glass teapots with a tea infuser inside and we thought we'd make tea the proper way, instead of using tea bags. The instructions were rather interesting. Such as: Add hot water and leave for 45 min for imediat alirigt. With our temperature plumetting at the moment if we did this the only thing which would be "alirigt" would be iced tea. (OK, I know those in the US don't sympathise with 5 degrees Celcius being cold, but for us sunny Queenslanders that's starting to get chilly). The teapot actually made great tea (when left for 5 min) and I was sad when my clumsy ways meant it shattered one day. I guess the Chinese ought to know how to make tea.
Have you ever thought though what it must be like the other way around? We had a taste of this last week. Matt was doing a project about dangerous animals in Queensland. His job was to produce a brochure for tourists letting them know about the dangers of the tiger snake and how to treat snake bite. He decided to produce the information in different languages and thought he'd be clever and use an internet translation site.
When Anika read the brochure's French though she started laughing fit to burst. Apparently "Watch out for them [snakes] all year in Queensland and on southern summer nights," translates as, "Watch out for Queenslanders, especially on southern summer nights."
In light of the "Be Dangerous" sign I guess we're just obeying orders.
Labels: translation
posted by Mrs Q @ 6:48 PM
1 Comments:
At June 19, 2008 at 7:37 AM ,
TobyBo said...
I am delighted to hear your son is engaged in the creation of more international Engrish. I don't know what a tiger snake is but I am certainly not going to google and have any alarming images pop up on my screen. I do not think this critter is good for tourism.
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