An Expatriate in Taiwan » Engrish

Nightmark Engrish

The Expatriate — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 12:58:51 +0000

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.

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Nightmark Engrish

More Engrish pictures

Grocery Store Engrish

The Expatriate — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 07:33:33 +0000

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

The Expatriate — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 08:38:49 +0000

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

The Expatriate — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 08:48:35 +0000

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

The Expatriate — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 15:48:46 +0000

Found this DVD while browsing in Taichung. It’s the Taiwanese version of the American show “Ugly Betty.”

The Chinese title is 醜女無敵 (chǒunǔwúdí), 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 Engrish grammar and spelling (Lnvincible).

At NT$1280, I simply couldn’t justify buying it to see if it was worth it or not. Perhaps next time.

Japanese oddities

The Expatriate — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 03:22:55 +0000

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.

The elusive Banana Case! Holds and protects your banana so that no harm comes to it!

I should have bought this banana case when I had the chance. Now the store doesn’t have them anymore.

And, of course, you must have the banana rack to go with it.

Engrish notebooks.

Yes, I guess it does...

Alright then...

Yes, people actually buy large Choco Pie bins.

These next few are pretty cool. You put them into your bath and they foam up and dissolve into a piece of tempura that you can play with. Pretty funny and they come in several shapes.

You put this into your bathwater and it will dissolve to reveal tempura!

So much fun... comes in many shapes, too.

This next one is just…. well, it’s Japanese. I’m sure you can figure it out.

Seriously... I'm just not sure what to say.

Does it really need instructions?

And now some bags with some good sayings.

Quite obvious, really.

I didn’t get the whole thing, but it reads “True love is like Big Foot. Everybody talks about it, But nobody has ever found it. Don’t worry, I’m not going to sell you to an ear-duster.” What is an ear-duster?

Indeed.

This is a longer one.

Finally, a water nozzle. Except it’s written phonetically again. I don’t know, maybe “Waterr nozuru” is the actual Japanese pronuncation for this thing, but I highly doubt it.

A water nozzle... sort of.

Japanese Engrish

The Expatriate — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 07:40:03 +0000

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

The Expatriate — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 07:17:01 +0000

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.

Related posts: Engrish Ketchup Engrish Menu Engrish

More Engrish pictures

The Expatriate — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 13:22:19 +0000

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 back to America. It reads “飲水區” or “yǐn shuǐ qū” – literally, water drinking area. For some reason, they translated it as “kitchen,” even though it’s only a water machine and nothing else.

Next up are two pages from a book I found at the nightmarket. The book is aimed at young children, quite obviously. Each page has a picture with accompanying Chinese and English text opposite it. Needless to say, some things were translated quite oddly.

OK, so maybe it could be called a nipple, since that is what it is supposed to substitute for, but come on… wouldn’t “pacifier” be better?

And what is a pinafore? This looks like a “bib” to me. I actually had to lookup the word pinafore because I’d never heard it before. Wikipedia tells me that a pinafore is a sleeveless garment worn as an apron. Going off that, I can definitely say that the object pictures here is not a pinafore.

Finally, just a random shot of a local business. It should be “Sang Mei Design,” but they got a few letters mixed up. The Pinyin (Sang Mei) also has a mistake. The character pictured there (上) should make it “Shang Mei.” (EDIT: As pointed out by the commenter, it apparently is pronounced as “sang” when said with a Taiwanese accent.)

Engrish

The Expatriate — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 08:17:25 +0000

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.

Roman was not built in a day