The phrase "Pork with fresh cabbage" would never raise an eyebrow, but an honest Japanese to English translation attempt resulted in the above title and now the phrase lives forever. The internet has many sites that deal with English mistranslations, but nothing that acts as a guide. The Pork with Fresh Garbage Portal fills this void. Contorted and confusing English mistranslations are a great source of amusement, if taken in the right spirit. They are cross-cultural miscommunications and not signs of incompetence. Happily, most web authors understand this.

      Japanese Contortions

      
Japanese Engrish   Despite its somewhat unfortunate title, this is the best site of 
its kind on the internet today
and is a delight to wander through.
 Many products, like 'Hacker's mint and grapfruit candy'  and  "BM canned coffee," are pictured.

      
Keith's Funky Japanese Products  has pics of 14 products, like "Men in Black" black noodle soup and "New Soft Bread...makes you happy and cheerful." 

      

Rhetto's Crazy English Page is a quotes-only site, but nicely laid out. With sightings like "High quality accessory for flavor driving" 
(seen on an automobile goods packaging) and "This is the space where we can be willing to coming."
( seen on a wall inside a video shop),  this turns into a fun site.

      
Lost in the translation 
  More "mistrans", with emphasis on Japanese, and some Cantonese, stabs at English such as "ASAHI SUPER DRY BEER."

      
Mistranslations into English from Japanese  An Internet translation service, A.L. Madrid & Associates,  puts up 14 cute mistrans, including the title of this page.

      
Spring has come  a brief, sweet personal page explains why "Spring has come" could be translated as ""Bring a coil."

      
The Wandering Sufi  an article about "the underground anarcho-Sufi scholar Peter Lamborn Wilson," who theorizes that 
Beat Zen's early American success was due, in part, to mistranslating Buddhist words, but not Buddhist spirit.


      

      The Rest of the World

      

      
L.A. Times  Article from 2/1/2000, "Fractured Spanish and Linguistic Assaults."

       
"Translating Cheyenne  Cheyenne translation examples, including mistrans.

      
British Mistrans  More of a mangled English than a mistrans page, but still fun.

      
Garry Trudeau  Satirist Trudeau mocks a Hungarian newspaper's interview with Madonna.

      
Tongue of Frog  Taiwanese  product  info for sponge frog, "CAUTIONS: Never throw out the other person's head."

       
1000 Little Pumpkins  Over 1000 Brazilian idioms listed.

      
Wall Street Journal  Georgia College and State University page which includes 4/13/98  WSJ article, "WILL 'MR. CAT POOP' CLEAN UP AT THE BOX OFFICE IN 
HONG KONG?"

      
Bibliofind search  a search discovered
"ESSAY ON THE PRINCIPLES OF TRANSLATION.; London: T. Cadell and W. Davies and W. Creech, 1797. The author has cited some of the most hilariously awkward and mistranslations ever to be found in one volume. 
Greek, Latin and French. $250."

      

      Lists

      

      The following is a sample of a  number of mistrans emails have been floating around the various listservsthrough the years.

      
List 1       List 2
       List 3       
List 4       
List 5       
List 6

      
List 7      
List 8       
List 9       
List 10     
List 11     
List 12       
      

      


      
No page about fractured English would be complete without a mention of
      
 Richard Lederer's Verbivore. Lederer is the
 American guru  of word lovers. Any comments, suggestions, etc re this page can be emailed to  Webmaster.

      






      



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