Shanghai...home of quality Engrish translations

[Fenris]

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=43340&item=2270607719&rd=1

ABOUT ME:

Thank you for you are interesting in this product, we appreciate your business. I have collected Chinese high quality and genuine antiques for over 30 years, I am very elf-struck and possessed for these beautiful ancient arts, For example: exquisite porcelain, ancient jade carving, Buddhism art, Chinese ancient inkstone, beautiful elegant tri-color pottery and painted pottery, rare bronze vessel and other antique. I has managed one big antique shop in Shanghai city. and because I has collected antiques for many years, I has many friends in this sphere everywhere in China. and I has a whole available and detailed net for my antique collection. It can ensure that I can get more and much quick information about antiques, so I collected many precious beautiful antique arts. Now, I am very glad to offer my collections on ebay for trade and intercourse with everybody. I hope more person can like these ancient Chinese arts. I promise to make your experience from buying them from me as pleasant as possible.

[Bluebear]

1. My favorite instructions....

[Lydia Leftcoast]

4. That one is definitely machine translation

From what language, I cannot tell.

Remember that next time you are tempted to run some English through Babelfish in order to correspond with someone who speaks another language. It WILL come out sounding like this.

I was once asked to translate a product manual by a Japanese translation agency. They told me to follow the usage in the client company's previous manual, which they sent to me for reference. Well, it was machine translated, and so was no use at all except that they had fed the machine some of the in-house terminology. Otherwise, it made zero sense. But the Japanese people at the agency didn't know English well enough to tell.

[JohnyCanuck]

2. That guy's English might be lousy

but it's still 1000% better than my Mandarin or Cantonese. Just remember it's possibe the Chinese will be having the last laugh on us when our kids or grandkids find thmeselves out of necessity tying their tounges into knots struggling to speak Cantonese or Mandarin in order to flog our remaining natural resources and what few manufactured products we might still be producing (if any) to the Chinese.

[flamingyouth]

3. What's wrong with being elf-struck?

I mean, really - aren't we a little critical? ;)

[Screaming Lord Byron]

6. Elves keep beating me up.

At the mall, on the bus, even at work.

[GOPisEvil]

I hate being struck by elves!

They always aim low, if you know what I mean. *cringe*

[Ellen Forradalom]

5. What I love about English-language learners

is the wonderfully fresh ways they find of expressing themselves. "Elf-struck" for enchanted? In some situations, this wouldn't pass, but here, he really gets his point across in a way that gets your attention.