Japanese erections named 'Bollox', 'Wonder Device'
Someone had better have a quiet word with Japanese wooden building outfit Bess, which is providing fine entertainment for the English-speaking expat community with this new example from its range: Screen grab from Bess showing the Bollox log cabin According to our local informant "Tokyo Nosehair", Bess recently changed its …
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Re: Ah, but...
No - he'll probably get a really nice wooden shed as a bonus.
Re: Re: Ah, but
Only one shed, I was thinking of getting two but...
Elections you mean?
The post is required, and must contain letters.
What a beautiful example
of Engrish!!
We collected quite a few on our trip to Japan, but this must be the best.
Thumbs up, because, well, where else would it point
Can their buildings
Be made big enough to accomodate a ball room....?
I heard there's going to be a rain canopy accessory
Called the "Teabag" obviously
Fabulous Awning
Will John Stalker and Drummer be doing the advertising?
English as Foreign Language RTL design
Worked on a micro-electronics design where the RTL had been developed in Japan. Internally there were two copies of the main "functional unit" which were named "J" and "K" ... and to indicate which signals related to "funtional unit j" or "funcional unit k" they'd used a prefixing scheme which add to the front of the name either "fuj_" or "fuk_" which caused some amusement.
Also (may have been a different project) came across a Chinese speaking engineer who'd picked up the idea that to avoid signal names being too long you could abbreviate them by dropping some of the letters ... his block contained several counter registers and he'd abrreviated all of these names by dropping the "o" from "_count"
dropping the "o" from "_count"
Won't somebody think of the Daily Mail readers?
@dropping the "o" from "_count"
In my experience with RTL there is simply no way to truncate the word count in a meaningful way without it looking rude. Perhaps its my potty mind. Yeah, that's my coat.
Never mind the borokkusu
To be fair to the company, I can see how they might have got the name. The katakana (Japanese syllabic text) stamped on the logo reads ボロックス "borokkusu". That's also how you'd transliterate the English word "blocks" into Japanese - the extra vowels turn up because Japanese is built around what we'd consider to be consonant-vowel syllables. Since the Bollox range seems to be owner-designed kitset-style homes, "blocks" almost makes sense.
Then again I'm nowhere near fluent in Japanese, so this could all be a load of borrokusu.
ボロックスのか？
Surely ブロックス (burokkusu) would be a more natural transliteration? Like ブログ (burogu) for 'Blog'.
ボロックス: いなり＾Hかに是非楽しむ。
＾そのひどい冗談のおかげで行きます。。。
sorry to respond to my own post, but..
I meant that burokksu would be a more natural transliteration for "blocks". "ボロックス" is definitely pronounced "bollocks" (or at least somewhere between "bollocks" and "borrocks").
http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/稲荷寿司
plain text only
I take it the shed noticeably alters it's gait depending on the weather?
4
All those years we, in the west, footstepped around using the number 4 in our product names in the far east (including renaming the Psion 4 to 'Siena' and jumping straight to 'Series 5'), and they just throw it all right back in our faces.
What a load of old log cabins.
Don't use English, please.....
I feel bad for the Japanese, they love to use bits of English for things to make them sound cool, from a few words in J-pop to use in anime. The problem is they always make a complete hash of it. I appreciate the complement, but if you are going to do it at least do it well or you just get treated as a laughing stock, as in this case.
But then again probably no-one there cares, as it is all meant for internal consumption where they would not know what something means but since it is English it must be cool. Like Del boy and his use of French terms....
And if you look inside
You will find a fine array of "appliances"
http://www.mediafire.com/i/?9ck66arwufjl96e
with the right link this time
Likely to be a lack of attention to detail in translation.
Bit like when 'dry' gets translated from Chinese as 'fuck'.
Not quite Dried off
As well as the problems surrounding the translation of what is "gan" in untoned pinyin, I have also seen another mistranslation that yields "chicken before sex" when they mean "baby chicken".
Advice to the Japanese people...
If you wax your bollox you'll get a wonderful finish.
Taxi!
happens elsewhere too
I often see a well known brand of creme fresh on the supermarket shelves in France with a promo deal for a gym chain called "Lady Moving". Gratuit lady moving, Pass Lady moving and other endless variants.
It always gives me a grin, I imagine two blokes in warehouse brown coats with a sack truck who come round your place and move the lady in question to her new location hannibal lecter style.
I'd buy a summerhouse named bollox though, just for the name. And so I could say to my inlaws "do you want to see my bollox?" or announce to callers "Im just in the bollox Ill call you from the office", or "office bollox" . Yes I am a child :D
The other big question...
If I purchased one, would there be a team to come over and work on my Bollox until its fully errect?
Yanks?
I was under the impression that "bollocks" (and derivations thereof) was well-understood in British English (meaning = crap!), but that Americans had no comprehension of it?
It's more complicated than that...
...depending on use, in British English bollox (or bollocks) can mean either good or bad. EG
"That's the dog's bollox" = "That is very good indeed"
"That's a load of old bollox" = "That is very bad indeed"
Consistency? We've heard of it...
Not ideal
Dick Johnson lives next door, and he'll always want to come over. It's cheap though because it is near to the arse-end of Tokyo
You'd have to be nutes to live there during the teste phase, but I'm sure they'll find a couple of scrotes.
I often wonder if this is deliberate
I often wonder of some of the Engrishes I've seen were deliberate, especially when I see substitution of R's for L's. Some of that might be deliberate humor, some might be some wise-ass screwing with his English-ignorant boss.
All it needs now
Is a fridge by SMEG.
Anyone seen my coat?
Great true story from my days at Sony
Way back in the mid-90s, Sony explored getting into the ISP market, to better deploy all their music, game and movie content (that they had just bought Columbia Pictures in Hollywood is important to this story). This was run out of the marketing department in Japan
Target audience: teenagers and young adults who were more open to tech
Who to appeal as a "spokesmodel" to this young audience: an interationally recognizable cartoon character!
Problem: Most internationally recognizable cartoon characters belong to Warner Brothers or Disney, who were not about to help Sony now that it was a competitor in the movie business.
Solution: Found an internationally recognizable cartoon character not controlled by Disney or WB: Woody Woodpecker!! His rights belonged to the small, independent King Features Syndicate
Result: Marketing and Japan brought over the relevant U.S. execs from Columbia, Sony Music, Sony North America, etc. and pitched them on the prospective campaign/product name of (and here's the payoff!):
Woody the Internet Pecker!!
After much U.S.-based horror (that quickly turned into merriment) and Sony corporate realizing that getting into the ISP business could alienate other ISPs who would otherwise be conduits for Sony content, the proposed foray into the ISP business was dropped.
Can you imagine bringing a date home...
And she tells you "Your home is Bollocks!!"
What's the Japanese for "mood-killer"?
self-expanding
Do they market a small hut which, when given some careful brushing, suddenly expands to form a large log cabin?
On another matter, do people recall the UK cough sweet named "zubes". They wanted to open a market in various Arabic-speaking countries until they realized that the name of the sweet was too close to a slang word for "penis". This, of course, meant that their most famous advertising slogan "suck on a zube" may not get the reception they intended.
It took a little thinking...
...but might the Actual Intended Genuine English Word have been... Barracks?
Mine's the one with the Compact Handy Nihongo<>Engrish Dictionaly in the reft-hand pocket... No, that's a PokeBall and therefore by definition not mine...
Thanks, yes; that's the right one. And that is all! 0{;-)o<
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