back to article 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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  1. LuMan
    Coat

    Ah, but...

    ...will the head of his PR Dept get the sack?

    1. Lester Haines (Written by Reg staff) Gold badge

      Re: Ah, but...

      No - he'll probably get a really nice wooden shed as a bonus.

      1. Captain TickTock
        Joke

        It won't be easy...

        .. for his wife to blow _that_ bonus

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Alien

        Re: Re: Ah, but

        Only one shed, I was thinking of getting two but...

  2. Johan Bastiaansen
    Happy

    Elections you mean?

    The post is required, and must contain letters.

  3. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    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

  4. SirTainleyBarking
    Coat

    Can their buildings

    Be made big enough to accomodate a ball room....?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      probably not but

      there's always pocket billiards

  5. jm83
    Thumb Up

    Fabulous Awning

    Will John Stalker and Drummer be doing the advertising?

    1. Lamont Cranston

      BLOCK OUT THE SUN!

      /Jeremy Hardy

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I heard there's going to be a rain canopy accessory

    Called the "Teabag" obviously

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    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"

    1. Captain TickTock
      Childcatcher

      dropping the "o" from "_count"

      Won't somebody think of the Daily Mail readers?

    2. paulf
      Coat

      @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.

  8. Simon Brady

    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.

    1. Frumious Bandersnatch
      Coat

      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。。。

      1. Frumious Bandersnatch

        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

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    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.

  10. G C M Roberts
    Windows

    plain text only

    I take it the shed noticeably alters it's gait depending on the weather?

  11. This post has been deleted by its author

  12. ph0b0s

    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....

  13. asiaseen

    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

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Likely to be a lack of attention to detail in translation.

    Bit like when 'dry' gets translated from Chinese as 'fuck'.

    1. Qu Dawei
      Headmaster

      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".

  15. Ian Stephenson
    Coat

    Advice to the Japanese people...

    If you wax your bollox you'll get a wonderful finish.

    Taxi!

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    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

  17. NogginTheNog
    Thumb Down

    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?

    1. Captain TickTock
      Boffin

      RE: Yanks

      Balls!

    2. Steve Dulieu

      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...

  18. The Jay
    Coffee/keyboard

    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?

  19. Bobl

    Do they do a kennel?

    I'd expect it would be very good!

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Title

    Never mind the Bollox, here's the Sex Pistols.

  21. IR

    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.

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Trollface

    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.

  23. SirTainleyBarking
    Coat

    All it needs now

    Is a fridge by SMEG.

    Anyone seen my coat?

  24. Anonymous Coward
    Go

    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.

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Go

    Can you imagine bringing a date home...

    And she tells you "Your home is Bollocks!!"

    What's the Japanese for "mood-killer"?

  26. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    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.

  27. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So

    Does it shrink when it gets cold?

  28. Walking Turtle
    Coat

    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<

  29. kain preacher

    Bad names

    What about Dick army

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