Sometimes, of course, they are incredibly bad and hilarious. But I think I enjoy the subtly odd ones just as much, if not more.They just make me smile. (Undoubtedly because I’m a bit of a language freak to begin with, so I’m hyper-aware of weird constructions)
Like:
Really? I get to write to invisible ink? Would that be Mr. or Mrs. Invisible Ink? And I get to look at what I’ve written? Oh joy! And finally… a pen that makes me draw fantastically in the darkness!
Very convenient to take away! Those bullies are gonna snatch this sucker right outta your hands!
And as for the color of the item, well, we might just send you some blue…randomly…so watch out!
I work with research journals and related publications from all over the world, so I’ve had to cultivate patience with bad English. I’m talking, for example, medical journals that refer to a patient’s liver as “she”. Or “Harvard Finance Research”, which is published in Spain and has jack to do with Harvard as far as I can tell: http://www.ascifi.eu/gestor/index.php?lang=en
I suspect this one is using machine translation. Don’t miss the “Letter from the editor”, with its tribute to “Great Economists, Nobel laureate and jinn” and their “magic formulas”. If “jinn” are responsible for our finance, that would explain a lot, actually.
As for packaging, which is where the OP examples seem to come from, I’ve got a box for a hand-cranked shredder here with some features listed:
“Safety, simple and easy with hand”
“It is facility to site anywhere in office”
and suggested “Shredded-paper utilizable:”
“Substitute to shock proof to avoid broken”
“The raw material for shredded-paper picture” (???)
“Mattress for animal”
Then there are the typo-ridden safety warnings. “Pay attention to avdid rolled necktie, hair, necklance in operation.” “It’s danger to tounch the shred-slash with hand.” Yes, you do have to be careful what you “tounch” with hand.
It’s always a dead giveaway on Ebay… I look for US sellers just for speed of delivery, and there’s a lot of Chinese sellers that claim to be in the US…but if you read the listing, it becomes very questionable.
The best I ever saw was English to German (sort of) back in the 70s on a computer at a US military base. “Damen und Herren - touchen sie nicht oder is vill poppenkorken, springensnappen und blowenfusen. Danke.”
