Ah, but...
...will the head of his PR Dept get the sack?
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 …
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"
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.
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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....
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
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.
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.
...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<