Your Friendly Japanglish Notebook...plus a contest!
~At work today, I located some Japanglish on a notebook cover belonging to one of my co-workers. To the co-worker's vast amusement, I took a picture of the notebook:
Here are closeups of the text on the top and bottom of the cover:
^ On the top, misspellings and all:It is our hope that this iteme will become your good friend
and help to make your life enjoy-able all the time.
and help to make your life enjoy-able all the time.
What's an iteme? Seriously though, if you consider your notebook to be your friend, you need new friends...
^ On the lower cover:The benefit of this notebook is up to
the sense that comes from your passion
the sense that comes from your passion
Huh??? Okay, I'm announcing a translation contest, to see who can come up with the best "normal English" translation of the above Japanglish. Post your entries as comments to this post (click "comments" on the bottom right of this post, for those of you who read this blog but don't let me know it...). All are welcome to enter, and your translation can be as logical or as ridiculous as you want.
The contest winner receives (insert drumroll here)...respect! I'll even throw in recognition in a future post!
[*One entry per person please, and the deadline for submissions is November 1st*]
~Oyasumi!
The contest winner receives (insert drumroll here)...respect! I'll even throw in recognition in a future post!
[*One entry per person please, and the deadline for submissions is November 1st*]
posted by David @ 11:32 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
Starlady;
This notebook is perfect for writing your thoughts and ideas, how ever senseless they may be.
That's my interpretation. That is wild Japanglish!
Crotchet: [from the English “crotch” meaning ‘of the region between the legs’ and the Latin “et”, meaning ‘to be’ (or some version of the verb, my Latin is a bit rusty)] meaning ‘to be a crotch’; the japanglish version of ‘asshole’
"It is our hope that this iteme will become your good friend and help to make your life enjoy-able all the time."
The notebook maker is being sarcastic. The notebook’s name implies it’s evil motives which means this phrase is meant to trick the unsuspecting user to believe that the notebook will not open up a black hole or eat the hand of the user (unless you speak the correct Latin phrase, something like “Clatu, Verata, Nict*cough*cough*”)
"The benefit of this notebook is up to the sense that comes from your passion"
An allusion to the name of the notebook. I’m assuming that the notebook is based on the AWSEMO robot’s ‘pleasure’ circuitry. But just don’t expect the notebook to call you in the morning...
Geez, that last one, I can not beat, but I will be the most bitter:
Crotchet-R:
Perhaps a reference to crocheting (CROW SHAY ING)- that down-homey mother, sitting in her rocking chair and crocheting you a sweater or scarf or battlemech-warmer or whatever. (Post-war culture sometimes uses an awful lot of borrowed imagery from "western" culture, however, we make tacky movies about all sorts of crap (the hollywood rendition of "Memoirs of a Geisha"? What?) and even making this distinctive break between "East" and "West" is dangerous, it leads to all sorts of bad crap, wiki it up: "orientalism". Even the validity of culture and race as a unified construct is vain and tenuous, so I conclusively say- Let them have their mechwarmer-making matronly figures!
"It is our hope that this iteme will become your good friend
and help to make your life enjoy-able all the time."-
One thing deeply enjoyable about the cultural equivalents of US and other developed countries (particularly non-western ones) is the variances of subtlety by which products try to sneak into the constructed notions of comfort such that they become a necessary piece of your life (because, without them, you are sad and lonely and doomed to a cold, unforgiving bosom of modernization). Is there a way that an inanimate object can completely by "your friend"? I've named my cell-phone because it is necessary, but I'd only cry for all the phone numbers I lost, and not the phone itself. However, is not another circumstantial mourning a valid emotional connection to an inanimate object? Another thing, I want to buy this thing because my life will BE ENJOY-ABLE ALL THE TIME. HOLY-CRAP.
"The benefit of this notebook is up to
the sense that comes from your passion"
Oh, they've covered this clever sham well! My own emotional investment in their firm's product is up the that *innate* "sense" springing forth from my own passion. This notebook is everything I will want it to be, but nothing more or less, unless my sense if comfortable with directing my passion all over the notebook. That... sounds really disgusting- replace "notebook" with whatever you want and then quote me in a newspaper and watch my career dissolve like the sincerity of this hollow mockery of socio-emotional constructs!
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