Taking Engrish to new heights (depths?)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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Recently, I went to a birthday party at a local Chinese restaurant. I made the obligatory attempt to use chopsticks – and like most people, I ended up using a fork. In the process, however, I discovered what must be the worst example of “Engrish” I’ve ever encountered.

The chopsticks came in a little paper sleeve with writing on both sides. The front of the sleeve has a bunch of Chinese characters which I can’t read, and then the following greeting:

Nice to know China has a glonous history. We should all be so lucky. I presume that they wanted to say “glorious,” or maybe “gluttenous.”

The back side of the sleeve has the instructions on how to use the chopsticks, and here’s where the fun really starts. The instructions are oriented from left to right down the length of the sleeve (the long direction), and they consist of three little illustrations with accompanying text.

Step 1 reads:

“Tnurnb”??? I’m pretty sure that they were shooting for “thumb,” since the drawing shows a hand with a single chopstick tucked (note correct spelling) under the thumb.

Step 2 shows a hand holding a pair of chopsticks correctly, it reads:

“Chcostick”? Now they’re just being lazy. They spelled it correctly four times.

Step 3 shows the hand using the chcosticks to hold a dumpling. It instructs you:

OK, class. How many errors can you find here?

Lastly, in case you didn’t read the other side, they remind you that the chopsticks are a PRODUCTOF CHINA

Really, this thing is almost beyond belief.

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Well, now I’m going to call them chcosticks for the rest of my days.

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Pretty bad, but I’m not sure rotten spelling classifies it as Engrish. At least all the words they are trying to spell make sense in context. It lacks that surreal “Pocari Sweat” quality.

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Now I want Chinese for lunch.

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Can I add a spanglish hijack? Thank you.

Sign at the corner store, owned by Middle Eastern men (don’t know what country they’re from):

No hanging out. (and some other stuff under it).

Right below that:

No hangie aqui. :eek:

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Are you sure it wasn’t more a problem of ink bleeding and/or fading? For example, “Glonous” could be glorious with the “ri” bleeding together. And “tnunrb”, could be the top of the h faded to become n, and the parts of the m faded to become nr.

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I’me sure it’s not a question of bleeding ink. Believe me, goofy Engrish provides hours of fun over here and is a major source of entertainment. (Called “Tinglish”; that’s Thai + English.) And from what I’ve seen in China, it’s even worse there!

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I suspect the explanation is typesetting by a person not fluent in English, who gets confused by Latin letters that look the same (like r and n). The original may not have had those spelling errors.

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In fact, this link has some excellent local examples of Tinglish.

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That particular chopstick wrapper seems ubiquitous. I have several friends who can quote it from memory.

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Not bad, but it can’t hold a candle to this menu.

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“West celery fries the tripe”? :smiley:

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I’ve been laughing at those instructions for years (they are mass produced, apparently).

Now you can pick up anything
Really? Even an elephant?

My stepmom is from Hong Kong, and her mother once bought me some shorts. They probably looked cool in Hong Kong, what with the English words scribbled on them. But they actually said (no joke): “7 up Sports Drink. And don’t you forgot (sic) it”

Hmmm…makes me wonder whenever I see cool chinese symbols as a tattoo (and I say this as one with cool chinese symbols as tattoo).

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Can I get a strange flavor of inside freasure to go please?

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NPR story about Chinese efforts to fix Engrish translations before the Olympics. Things like “face powder noodles,” “Racist Park,” and “saliva chicken.”

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Oh no, the printing is all quite nice and professional. It was just typed out by someone who can’t possibly have spent more than about five minutes learning the English language :wink:

God, that’s funny! I love the last item:

Call me prudish, but I prefer to keep my relationship with my salt strictly platonic. I’ll admit that I’m curious as to how the beautiful pole factors into it, however. Does the salt do a pole dance?

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Maybe they had them confused with choco sticks

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I see your menu and raise you Fuck a tea tree mushroom. Your one is good, but this one’s breathtaking. Husband and wife lung slice! Fuck the pot burn!

We spent a long time collecting Chinglish when travelling in China in 2005. From WriterChick’s journal:

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I went to China for a few weeks last year and saw many fine examples, including:

On a kid’s T-shirt: “Scarface - Don’t Kill Your Brain”
Another T-shirt: “Just What the Artist Romantic” (still trying to work that one out)
Sign at building site: “Started construction here, troubled you, understand please!”
Restaurant: “Flavor Tang”
Name of store: “Really Photo” (can’t remember what the store was)
Item on restarant menu: “Light Fried Anything”
Another menu item (different restaurant): “Leapfrog Smell Pot” (he’s not the only one…)

I was making notes of these as I went along. There were many others.

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At Mutanyu Great Wall - on the disabled toilet: “OLDMAN”.

And a tough guy triad-wannabe youth in Hong Kong stalking down the street wearing a t-shirt that read: “MODEL AIRPLANE IS FRESH AND EXCITING”.