Handspanking “Engrish”

I love coming across things that just have to be described as absurd on some level. One of those things is the kind of stuff found at Engrish.com: "the humorous English mistakes that appear in Japanese advertising and product design." It can come from other parts of the world and languages, but the site claims that the Japanese do it best. I can believe it. Apparently, a lot of Japanese advertising will incorporate English words as part of its design. Content isn't always the important part. Hilarity often ensues.

I like to extend the loose definition to include other instances of odd translations. I think that I find it amusing because it comes from mistranslation rather than ignorance or laziness. (Then again, I do find the material on blogs like The "Blog" of "Unecessary" Quotation Marks to be pretty funny).

Adam is lucky enough to have a shirt that serves as a fine example. Kate and Fauzan gave him a shirt they picked up in Yemen. It has one or two cartoon dogs on it. The T-shirt says: "Roll Up, Roll Up!" It is a bright color and is way too small (it may be sized so that one of our nephews could wear it), but it was too good to pass up. I will have to see if I can find it again. I suspect it is with his old Santa Cruz Banana Slugs shirt...another kind of awesome.

I don't have anything so fun, but it is absurd (and a little disturbing). I have been kind of obsessed with a sign we first saw a couple years ago. Every once in awhile we take a different route back home from Louisville. I can't help it, but the sign for this Chinese restaurant cracks me up every time I see it. I know that it is probably wrong, but I am trying to spin this in the most positive way possible. I hope that this is a result of some misspelling on the part of the owner instead of a racist caricature (in the same vein as that awful commercial that aired during the superbowl...the one with the pandas with bad accents and the laundry and the business ideas service or whatever it was).

I finally took a picture of it and after all the build-up, here it is:



Seriously, what is going on here? Crazy mistake? Odd ad campaign? Or compelling evidence that some areas of the country definitely need a larger Asian population to head off some asshattery? Whatever it is, I just can't look away...it just seems like a trainwreck. Okay, a trainwreck that I laugh at.

There are so many wonderfully weird things out there. I am trying to get in the habit of carrying my camera around so that I don't miss more of these absurdities. I was too late to catch the sign on this bar in Lafayette that boasted about its famous Hand-spanked burgers.

I hope I haven't missed getting a shot of the "Sanitary Lunch" sign. I wonder if Adam is up for a road trip?