The Japanese really try to cater to their English-speaking tourists by translating a few helpful and essential things.
The only problem is that English is a hard language to get exactly right. Even native speakers mess up their homonyms, apostrophes, and pronoun-subject agreements. Trust me, I know, I’m an English teacher.
During our two weeks in Japan, the signs kept me pretty well entertained.
At the indoor botanical gardens:
On a garbage can:
On the medal barriers at the ferris wheel in Osaka separating the lines:
A piece of the signage/user manual next to the heated toilet:
On a free map of the city:
At the Grand Palace in Tokyo:
At a flower shop:
The building we had to enter to go to the top of the building. It’s really fun, you guys:
You have to admire the effort.
RQ: Do you have any lost in translation experiences? Do you mess up your English at all?
Past Tall Tales Tuesday Posts:
I’m Brooke Selb, a Personal Trainer and Health Coach specializing in helping busy moms and moms to be to easily juggle mom life with family friendly recipes, and easy exercise routines to help you achieve your fitness goals that fit in with your already busy life with sound nutritional advice.
Those are fun to read – very interesting how things get changed in the translations!!!
They are pretty endearing!
Yep, Korea has many of these too. I think I will start taking pictures and make a Facebook photo album.
Haha! I would definitely give them credit for translating! That is super nice!
I always mess up my English…especially in front of kids! I feel like I stumble on my words. At least it teaches kids that even adults make mistakes 🙂
That’s an important lesson for the kiddos to learn. They think we are machines. It’s nice for them to see us as human.