Saturday, March 11, 2006

Lost in Translation

I love jokes that result from bad translations. I was reading this post (via Boing Boing) and I started laughing so hard that I thought I would wake up Mikelle. It's a menu for a Japanese resturaunt that offers such delicious dishes as: "Fragrant bone in garlic with strange flavor" and "Ginger bumping milk (hot)."

For some reason, I find "bad translation" jokes irresistible. Trevor pointed out some great ones here, here, and here.

My favorite of all time was on the TV show News Radio, when Jimmy James (if you haven't seen the show, think of a less evil, bumbling Rupert Murdoch) writes a book called: Jimmy James: Capitalist Lion Tamer which is a total flop in the US, but the Japanese translation sells like crazy, prompting the publisher to issue an English version--translated back from the Japanese--which is now called Jimmy James: Macho Donkey Wrestler. The transcript of his first book talk is here. It's funnier when you see it, though . . . I'll see if I can find the video.

--TinFoil Out

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