An Expatriate in Taiwan

Category: Engrish

  • Nightmark Engrish

    Snapped this picture of a shirt at a nightmarket. This is a very common form of Engrish – it’s basically just letters mashed on a keyboard to create the illusion of language. I see Taiwanese friends and students wearing these quite regularly.

  • Grocery Store Engrish

    I spotted this Worm Reminder at the Carrefour shopping center last December. For those of you that don’t get it, it’s supposed to be a “warm reminder.”

  • Another Engrish menu

    Here’s another menu; this one includes full-on Engrish. The restaurants delicious dishes include: The Thai Jiao tingles a chicken Chips cattle grain The Thai dozen throws a cattle Japanese pottery plank beef Sheet iron cattle and many more!

  • Engrish Menu

    Often, restaurants will have English menus for foreigners. Most of the time they are copies of the Chinese menus. Often they are simply lists. However, never before have I seen such a detailed menu as this:

  • Engrish TV Show

    Found this DVD while browsing in Taichung. It’s the Taiwanese version of the American show “Ugly Betty.” The Chinese title is [hanzi]醜女無敵[/hanzi] ([pinyin]chou3nu3wu2di2[/pinyin]), which literally means “ugly woman without equal,” denoting an exceptionally ugly woman. I presume their choice of invincible is due to a very poor dictionary. “Invincible Ugly Woman” (thanks Luuke!). Notice the […]

  • Japanese oddities

    Stores that sell Japanese products are very popular here in Taiwan. I enjoy going to them and browsing, just because the Japanese are insane and I always find peculiar items. Today I thought I’d share some of my finds with you. I should have bought this banana case when I had the chance. Now the […]

  • Japanese Engrish

    This is a series of Japanese anti-smoking pictures that line the walls of my school. I find these quite entertaining, but also somewhat confusing. Not all of them are entirely clear, but I’m sure they make much more sense in Japanese.

  • Random Engrish

    Found this on a poster for a new Jazz club opening up. Honestly, I have no idea how it gets this bad. With dictionaries, online dictionaries, spell checkers in every program, there’s really no excuse. I simply don’t understand.

  • More Engrish pictures

    I’ve had these pictures on my phone for a while and just lately got around to tagging and cataloging them. About time, I guess. First up is courtesy of Bank of Taiwan, one of the oldest banking institutions on the island, with branches pretty much everywhere. I saw this upstairs when I was sending money […]

  • Engrish

    It’s been a while since I’ve posted. I’ve been quite busy both with work and the Chinese New Year, which was quite fun. Time to get back on track with some Engrish. I don’t quite remember where I snapped this sign, but needless to say, they messed up the translation just a little bit.