英本語　(Eihongo) and other missuses of the Japanese language

What is Eihongo? Basically, when English speakers try to use Japanese and fail miserably. The most common example is in trendy tattoos with Chinese characters.
Anyhoo, I ran across a few examples of bad Japanese lately. First, check out the samurai-stormtrooper. What is his flag supposed to say? Time death? Inconvenient to women?
Then, for a challenge, try to spot what is wrong in the subtitles to the movie in this Daily Portal Z article (please note, the article is completelyJapanese, so use this).
There is also this page, with some Engrish thrown in to boot.

6 comments - What do you think? Posted by Claytonian - January 24, 2007 at 6:06 am

Categories: General Japan Tags:

http://kyklops.blogspot.com/ kyklops

Heehee… “baga” desu, ne?
Thanks for this. It’s not often I have the opportunity to laugh at someone else’s Japanese.
http://whatjapanthinks.com Ken Y-N

Liked the stormtrooper! I think 女に不自由 is either him declaring his complete lack of social skills or admitting that he has erectile dysfunction…

I can guess the first was created by looking up “time” and “to die” in a dictionary, but I haven’t a clue what 女に不自由 is supposed to be getting at!
the overthinker

I like the servant and the prince:
Prince: “Please prepare my SPA” (presumably a reference to that well-known Japanese magazine…
Servant: “Whatchoo talkin’ ’bout Princey?”

I have long found amusement in badly-subbed videos, and this is nice. Oh, and the stormtrooper is great fun. Perhaps you’re supposed to read it vertically left to right? 女に不自由時死亡: [very roughly as] “I’d die if I can’t get any chicks”?
Sara

My Japanese isn’t that good yet, but hell, I plugged that storm trooper’s flag text into a kanji translator and got, “A guy who never gets the women; nerd.” So he might have been calling himself a “nerd,” but the more literal meaning makes it pretty funny. It’s like calling yourself otaku… WTF? My Japanese Asian Civ professor just made our class watch a video about those people, and my reaction was “OMGWTF?!” If you like something so much, how about getting to know it for *real* instead of being a stereotypical ignorant, fat, American slob? *lol* Ha! No women for them! The light side of the force wins again. >;P

http://www.japanprobe.com James

I think you need to find a new kanji translator.

the overthinker

Can’t for the life of me see how that stormtrooper kanji can mean “nerd”, aside from the obvious fact that anyone dressed up like is one.
女=woman, female, chick, bint, bird….
に=particle modifier, “to” or “of” or “with” or really just about anything.
不自由=non-freedom
時=time
死亡=death.

Oh and if you really want a good laugh, watch “Trekkies”. I swear, that is the funniest video I have seen in a long time.

英本語　(Eihongo) and other missuses of the Japanese language

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