Engrish

File:EngrishSweatshirt.jpg

Engrish on a sweatshirt in Japan

An "Excellent Room" at Fukuoka Station, a staff-only area

Engrish refers to the grammatically incorrect variation of English often found in East Asian countries. While the term may refer to spoken English, it is more often used to describe written English, for which problems are easier to identify and publicize. Engrish has been found on everything from poorly translated signs, menus, and instruction manuals to bizarrely worded advertisements and strange t-shirt slogans. Usage of the term ranges from the humorous to the slightly pejorative. Country-specific terms, such as Japlish or Janglish for Japan, Konglish for Korean, and Chinglish for China also exist, although they can be considered more derogatory, with the possible exception of Chinglish, which enjoys widespread use in China (by English speaking Chinese people, as well as resident foreigners). See the "English Pseudo-dialects" box at the bottom of this article for other variants of corrupted English.

History

The term originates from the fact that Japanese and a few other East Asian languages do not have separate sounds for R and L. In Japanese the R sound is pronounced as an alveolar lateral flap (ɺ), articulated with the tongue flapped against the hard palate behind the front teeth, so that it sounds like a Spanish soft R. Because Japanese does not have a separate equivalent for the English L, native Japanese speakers not fluent in English often mispronounce English words containing the letter L. While the term mocks the accent, it is used mainly without malice in reference to humorous misuses, puns, and double entendres within written English, not difficulties in pronunciation.

Learning Engrish

Although many Japanese people are educated in English, the lack of native English speakers means that the education in spoken English is deficient and that there is little incentive to practice speaking the language outside school. Because secondary schools in Japan place heavy emphasis on preparing students for university entrance exams, English classes in junior high and high schools focus more heavily on grammar and vocabulary, which are tested on the entrance exams, to the virtual exclusion of oral communication practice.

While Japanese people may have problems differentiating L and R sounds, Korean, Thai and Chinese people have fewer problems in this respect since their languages have separate L and R sounds (though in Korean the separate sounds are allophones). However, in each of these three languages, there are phonotactic restrictions on these sounds. Chinese and Thai have no syllable-final L sound, so speakers tend to pronounce them as R and N respectively; Korean has no final R sound, and speakers would pronounce it as an L.

Intentional Engrish

Engrish is usually accidental, but sometimes its use is deliberate. Foreign branding, for example, serves the same purpose it does in the West: exotic embellishment. For the same reasons that a Chinese character or a Japanese Kanji tattoo seems "exotic" to many in the West, Asians may appreciate English words or gibberish for its aesthetic appeal alone; straight lines, frequent symmetry, and the unembellished curves of Latinate letters may all appeal to Asian senses of aesthetics and balance.

Some idiosyncratic usages of English among a community that is largely bilingual (Spanglish, Yinglish, Franglais, Konglish, Chinglish) have names with more neutral connotations, and are applied largely to people whose skills in English are more on par with those of the society in general.

Notable examples of Engrish

Engrish in video games

Some video games are particularly noteworthy for poor Japanese-to-English translations, resulting in memorable Engrish phrases, such as "all your base are belong to us" from the game Zero Wing and "you fail it" from Blazing Star. Naturally, as gaming technology progressed and the mainstream appeal of gaming grew, larger budgets became available for the development of games. The hiring of more professional translators and the use of better translation and quality control methods has resulted in the near eradication of the unintentional appearance of Engrish in later games.

Classic examples

• The phrase "All your base are belong to us," from the Sega Mega Drive/Sega Genesis video game Zero Wing, is the most widely known example of Engrish in video games; it spawned an Internet phenomenon and has an internationally strong fad fanbase.

• The video game Samurai Shodown 4, used the word "Victoly" instead of "Victory" at a duel's conclusion. SNK, the game's publisher, is so well-known for the poorly translated phrases in many of their games that sometimes video game Engrish is referred to as SNK-glish. Some other examples of this are "To push start only 1 player button", "Go next", "Congraturations" and "Entry your name" from Blast Off, and "A winner is you!" from the NES game Pro Wrestling.

• In the credits of Phantasy Star Online for the Sega Dreamcast, a dedication is made "to every hunters of PSO." In the American version of Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, the hero Ike says "Move out for the target area" when instructing allies to move to a certain point.

• In both the credits and printed media (instruction booklets, etc.) of the NES Mega Man games, Mega Man's creator, Dr. Light frequently had his name switched from Dr. Right to Dr. Light and back. Also Dr. Wily, Mega Man's nemesis was called Dr. Wiley in some titles. Later editions of Mega Man 2 for NES (and also Mega Man II for the Game Boy) rename Robot Master Crash Man (known for wearing a crash helmet with an upturned visor) as Clash Man, causing some level of dispute between fans of the game series.

• In the ending of Super Mario Bros. 2 for the NES, the character Clawgrip is incorrectly listed as "Clawglip." The same typo exists in the SNES version (in Super Mario All-Stars), but was finally fixed in the GBA remake Super Mario Advance.

• The Nintendo Entertainment System's incarnations of Ninja Gaiden had the oft-appearing giant dogs, known as Cerberus after the three headed dog of Greek myth, but the name is pronounced and spelled Kelberos in Japanese (derived from German "Kerberos"). However, the translators of the game, apparently not knowing this, continued to use the Kelberos name.

• In earlier versions of games throughout the Ogre Battle series, portions of text are plagued by poor grammar. The creators even failed to translate a few lines in Ogre Battle 64, accidentally leaving them in Japanese.

• The popular online MMORPG Silkroad Online contains various Engrish phrases, although the game is in fact Korean. It suffers from similar nonsensical phrases as a result of poor translations from the Korean version.

• Another popular but now defunct MMORPG, Earth & Beyond, included various fictitious corporations in its backstory. One of these was the Tada-O Corporation, purportedly descended from a Japanese corporation on Earth and beloved by players for its amusing and humorously described products, which could be purchased and used within the game. One fansite, formerly at www.tada-o.com but still mirrored here, is written entirely in the game's variant of Engrish and includes additional advertisements for fictitious products which were not part of the game, but which often make satirical references to aspects of it.

Examples in the Final Fantasy series

• The 1991 SNES game Final Fantasy IV contains numerous Engrish lines due to a poor translation. Perhaps the most well-known one is when the wizard Tellah, in a fit of rage against the bard Edward, shouts "you spoony Bard!" instead of the perhaps closer translation of "You son of a bitch!" Other lines include "The Road to Mt. Hobbs is being blocked by a thick ice", "Wow you noble looking", and "You are Cecil, I've heard of your feat". Some lines in the game also have poorly constructed sentences that run together in a bizarre fashion. When the white wizard Rosa recovers from her illness, she tells the hero Cecil, "I am alright. And I am a White Wizard. I won't bother you".

• In the 1994 American release of Final Fantasy VI, the two soldiers that accompany Terra in the beginning of the game are named Vicks and Wedge. Apparently, the translator, Ted Woolsey, otherwise known for skillful localizations, was unaware they were named after Biggs and Wedge, the two wingmen that join Luke Skywalker in the Death Star trench run in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. This also occurs with the Vicks and Wedge that show up in very minor roles in Chrono Trigger.

• The 1997 American release of Final Fantasy VII contained several Engrish mistakes. During the first boss battle, a “hint” was translated incorrectly as “Attack when the tail is up!” instead of “Don't attack when the tail is up!”. When Cloud first visits the slums near Aeris's house, she tells him “This guy are sick.” when talking about a man living in a pipe. The first time Cloud visits Kalm town and asks the citizens if they saw a man in a black cape, one person says, “Listen to me! Just now, some guy in a black cloak goes walked east towards that grassy field”. Later, between rounds at the Battle Arena, the computer asks the player if they would like to go on to the next stage. The option to go on was “Off course!” instead of “Of course!”, and the option to quit fighting is “No, way!”. When the Sneak Attack materia was triggered, the in-battle message which appeared said, “(name) was cought by surprise.” Also, at one point, it is remarked to Elena in a debate, "You are a Turks." The game also contained several mis-romanizations of English words, such as "Knowlespole", instead of north pole. Most of these errors were subsequently corrected in the PC port of the game.

• In the 1998 English release of Final Fantasy Tactics, many translations were failed, from names to spells. The most commonly looked at are examples such as the Breath attacks, cast primarily by Dragons in the game, being mistranslated as Bracelet. (Ice Bracelet, Bolt Bracelet, etc.) Similarly, the assassin skill "Stop Breath", which inflicts instant death, became "Stop Bracelet." Furthermore, there were actually names that were mistranslated, including Rudvich, the weapons smuggler that chapter three strongly involves; he should actually be Ludwig. A more prominent example is Weigraf, the popular nemesis of Ramza, was actually meant to be Wiglaf, a character from Beowulf. Also, at one point in the story, Ramza shouts to the wounded Weigraf, "No! Wiegraf!! Don’t open that!!" which more than likely should have been "Don't use that!!"

Current examples

File:100 percent come from natural.jpg

This juice is "100% come from natural".

• Engrish phrases can still be found in some Japanese versions of games today, such as the popular “Shine get!” from the Japanese version of Super Mario Sunshine, which was popular enough to be parodied in the English versions of later Mario games. Similarly, "Bonus get!" is found in the American version of "Kingdom Hearts 2", which is displayed in the top right corner of the screen after completing an in-game mission. "Get suru" is a way of saying "to receive" in popular Japanese; the "suru" is often omitted. Thus, the intended translation is probably "Bonus received!"

• Fawful of Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga is loosely considered to be a parody of poor game translations as well as the less infamous “ZELLLLOOO!!! JUZDIE ZELLLOOO!!!” (which is a mistranslation of "Zero") and “THE BADDLE HAZ JUSD BEGUNN!” from Mega Man X6, spoken by an insane and badly recovered Sigma. Another example is "You are a corageous" said by the doctor in Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral Town.

• Sega's PS2 version of Ferrari F355 Challenge is called 'Renewal Quality Edition' in Japan.

• The GBA port of Tales of Phantasia has one particularly poorly translated line. In a semi-major point in the game, an elf mentions a battle called Kangaroo. The intended name was Ragnarök.

• In Kirby and the Amazing Mirror, the mini-boss "Mr. Frosty" is incorrectly named as "Mr. Flosty".

• In Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude, as a parody of Engrish, one of the Japanese Vending machines in the game state phrases such as, "Enjoy your next always!" etc

• In the Pokémon series, the name of Porygon was originally a mistranslation of the English word polygon.

• The popular Homestar Runner website features a number of games which parody old video games, poor 'translations' included - though these are intentional. One of the most popular is the saying "Your Head A Splode", displayed and spoken upon the player's defeat. One of its DVD-exclusive Strong Bad Emails entitled "Videro Games" is entirely focused on the subject.

Engrish in popular media

Engrish in its original sense of unintentional mistranslation is periodically found in translated live action Asian film and television and occasionally in translated Japanese anime. However, it is more often used intentionally in English language productions as a parody of the concept, or of the linguistic differences that give rise to Engrish. In some instances, racist overtones, though unintentional, may be apparent.

Examples in animated television and film

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A CD single from the Sailor Stars series. It is intended to read "Three Lights."

The wartime Donald Duck cartoon, Commando Duck, the caricatures of the Japanese Army speak in Engrish, such as “Hello, please,” and later, “Must always be shooting rope in the center of the middle, just like Lone Ranger!”

Japanese anime can also feature examples of Engrish which, over time, become distanced from their original intended meaning. In Dragon Ball, for instance, the character of Bulma (Buruma) was intended to be called Bloomer--her father's name is Mr. Briefs, and in the sequels Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball GT she would have a son named Trunks and a daughter named Bra. Later, however, there are occasions when her name is clearly spelled "B-U-L-M-A".

Engrish has been featured in several episodes of the American animated series South Park. In episode 801, titled Good Times with Weapons, the main characters "play ninja" accompanied by a ridiculous song, sung in Japanese by Trey Parker, one of the show's creators, that featured the chorus “Let's Fighting Love”. The song is most likely a reference to Engrish found in some J-Pop songs featured in a large number of Japanese anime, in addition to the odd juxtaposition of English and Japanese--the song features lyrics such as "Taisetsu na mono protect my balls!", which when fully translated means "Important thing protect my balls", among other lines that make sense when fully put in English. The episode Mecha-Streisand features a Japanese TV announcer who sings the Godzilla theme song in Engrish. The episode featuring Chinpokomon also employed Japanese characters using Engrish. And Tuong Lu Kim, the Asian owner of the local Chinese restaurant City Wok, pronounces "City" as "Shitty."

The animated comedy Drawn Together features a character named Ling-Ling (a parody of the Pokémon character, Pikachu) who is an Asian of unspecified nationality. Ling-Ling's speech consists mainly of Japanese-sounding gibberish, while his subtitles contain almost exclusively Engrish. A joke directly referencing Engrish occurs in the episode "Super Nanny": when Ling-Ling takes an eye exam, he says "R" for every letter on the eye chart even though every letter on the chart is actually the letter L. Ling Ling also complains about his mispronounciation of "Prell" brand shampoo, stating "Oh, Plerr... How can you leave Ring-Ring hair with such shine and body and leave soul with such shame and embarrassment?"

A t-shirt spotted in Melbourne, Australia said: "But! Funky bench salsa"

Examples in live action television

In the Monty Python episode, "The Cycling Tour," the main character tells a Chinese man posing as a British Consul that he is on a bicycle tour of Northern Cornwall, to which the "consul" replies, "Ah! Colonworol!" An entire sketch built around the concept is "Erizabeth L," in which a Japanese con artist (played by Terry Jones) posing as Italian film director Luchino Visconti forces the cast of a period drama he is filming into speaking their lines with an exaggerated "Japanesque" accent and chides them when they slip into standard English pronunciation.

Benny Hill episodes have an Engrish speaking character called Chow Mein; his mangled English phrases baffle his interviewer: “How rubbery, evlybloody's crapping!”

On The Tonight Show, Jay Leno frequently shows poorly translated instructions from Asian products as part of the "Headlines" segment.

On the classic Seinfeld episode "The Chinese Woman", Jerry's caucasian girlfriend Donna Chang uses the word ridicurous in a conversation.

On Chappelle's Show Season 3, Episode 2, in the controversial skit "Racial Pixies", an Asian-dressed Chappelle was sitting on MTV vjay La La's shoulder telling an Asian man in the skit to say "Herro RaRa" instead of "Hello La La".

In 2003, on The Tom Green Show, Tom Green visits Japan. At one point, he finds a soda machine that reads: "Why Don't You Have Anything to Drink? Choose One, Making You Better Feeling!"

Examples in live action film

An early example of modern Engrish was seen in the 1983 comedy A Christmas Story, when waiters at a Chinese restaurant attempt to sing "Deck the Halls" to restaurant patrons, incorrectly singing "boughs of horry/Fa ra ra ra ra," instead of singing "boughs of holly/Fa la la la la."

Another movie example is the "Supplies/Surprise" gag from the movie UHF.

Still another movie example is the character of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il, in the 2005 puppet movie Team America: World Police, by the creators of South Park. In the movie, Kim Jong-Il (actually a marionette) always pronounces "L"'s as "R"'s, and even sings a feature song, "I'm So Ronery" (a mispronunciation of "I'm So Lonely").

A significant plot point of the film-noir movie Chinatown involves a Japanese man telling Jack Nicholson's character that saltwater is "Bad for grass" and Jack is picking up a pair of glasses from a saltwater pond.

Another popular example is in Lethal Weapon 4, when Mel Gibson's character is speaking to Uncle Benny, a Chinese restaurant owner/ Triad member. He asks Uncle Benny for some "flied lice" to which Benny responds "It's fried rice, you plick!". (The joke being that Benny corrects the flied lice part, but then mispronounces "prick".)

Other examples

The Tony Award-winning musical Avenue Q has a character named Christmas Eve of Japanese descent. She constantly confuses her L's and her R's, becoming incomprehensible at one point while trying to say the word "recyclables" during the song "Everyone's A Little Bit Racist".

Lord Mayor of Melbourne, the Honourable John So, is also an exponent of "Engrish". Of Chinese descent, So is often mocked by comedians and the public for his poor pronunciation of the English language.

Engrish can appear in labels, instructions and diagnostic messages in documentation and on hardware of products manufactured in Asian countries. One example is written on computer cooling-fans manufactured by Titan, which say, "Going faster is the system job." Another example is an error message on the Fujifilm FP363SC film processor, which reads "Urgentry close processing cover." Yet another example is the printing on packages of chopsticks found in many Chinese restaurants, which reads "Please to try your Nice Chinese Food With Chopsticks the traditional and typical of Chinese glorious history and cultual." (Some packages use glonous instead of glorious).

Many of the games on homestarrunner.com, especially Stinkoman 20X6 (which itself is a parody of Mega Man mentioned earlier), contain mock Engrish phrases. Some examples are KEEP TRY, FLASH 7 VERY REQUIRED, and I'LL FREEZE TO SQUARE!

Japlish

United States propaganda poster during World War II intentionally using Engrish to both discredit the Japanese as well as encourage United States citizens to produce.

Engrish can also refer to the Japanese pronunciation of English loanwords or a Japanese dialect with a number of English loanwords. Because Japanese has only five vowels, and few consonant clusters, English loanwords are often pronounced in a manner that sounds unusual and even humorous to English speakers. For example, in spoken Japanese, guitarist Eric Clapton becomes エリック・クラプトン Erikku Kuraputon, Australia becomes オーストラリア Ōsutoraria, and "McDonald's" becomes マクドナルド Makudonarudo, which is often further abbreviated to マクド Makudo or マック Makku. Japanese uses over 600 imported English words in common speech, sometimes in abbreviated form. Examples are ハンカチ hankachi for "handkerchief", フォーク fōku for "fork", テーブル tēburu for "table", プロレス puroresu for "pro wrestling", and so on. The more outlandish and humorous the pronunciation change is, the more likely it is to be considered Engrish. Even fairly logical English loanwords in Japanese will often sound foreign and unintelligible to an English speaker, such as the use of チーズ chīzu for "cheese" when taking a photograph. These pronunciation changes are linguistically systematic and are completely unrelated to the speaker's intelligence.

Engrish was once a frequent occurrence in consumer electronics product manuals, with phrases such as "to make speed up find up out document", but it is less frequent today. Another source of poor translation is unchecked machine translation, such as that from the Babelfish service or Google Language Tools. Engrish is often created by translating a phrase using the Babelfish service or Google Language Tools to translate something into Japanese, then copying and pasting the Japanese text and translating it back into English.

Pop culture

Engrish features prominently in Japanese pop culture, as some young Japanese people consider the English language to be highly fashionable. Japanese has assimilated a great deal of vocabulary from the English language, and many popular Japanese songs and television themes feature disjointed phrases in English amongst the mostly Japanese lyrics. Japanese marketing firms helped to create this popularity, and have subsequently created an enormous array of advertisements, products, and clothing marked with English phrases that seem highly amusing or inexplicably bizarre to a native English speaker. These new English terms are generally short-lived, as they are used more fashionably than meaningfully. Many times English is just used in advertising or on products as an attempt to look modern and is not actually an attempt to communicate.

In contrast to Engrish, the term Nihonglish is occasionally heard, as well as the variant 英本語Eihongo, a combination of 英語 Eigo, the Japanese word for the English language, and 日本語 Nihongo, the Japanese word for the Japanese language. It refers to the conceptual opposite of Engrish: badly pronounced and ungrammatical Japanese produced by a native English speaker. A typical example is the American English pronunciation of こんにちは konnichiwa; rendered with an English stress pattern and phonetics as /kə.ˈni.tʃi.wɑ/ . The term Nihonglish is often found among communities of Japanese language students where Japanese can be used sporadically in English conversation much as English is used among English students in Japan. The use of Nihonglish is usually intentional, and is done with a humorous or sarcastic intent. A heavy English accent is used, indicating supposed unfamiliarity with the rules of Japanese pronunciation. It is also known for being practiced occasionally by some non-Japanese fans of Japanese animation; in such cases it is also sometimes referred to as otakuism or Otaku-Speak.

Chinglish

Main article: Chinglish.

Chinglish, a portmanteau of the words Chinese and English, is a term used to describe poor or 'broken' English employed by native Chinese speakers. Chinglish is usually found in written form. Famous examples include "no q" as a response to "thank you" (often sinicized in Mandarin Chinese as 三Q - san q) and ok lah. (The second example is both Chinglish and Singlish.)

Konglish

Main article: Konglish.

Konglish is the use of English words (or words derived from English words) in a Korean context or a Korean dialect mixed with English loanwords. It also includes the use of words that are perceived to be English, but are in fact not English words. These could be words that have a different meaning in Konglish than they have in English, words that merely look or sound English, or words that are a mixture of Korean and English. Koreans usually use the word exclusively in the latter sense. In South Korea, the term Konglish is used to refer to a variety of English spoken with a Korean accent.

Singlish

Main article: Singlish.

Singlish, a portmanteau of the words Singaporean and English, is the English-based creole spoken colloquially in Singapore. It is very similar to Manglish, spoken in neighbouring Malaysia. As a distinct creole it is arguably not broken English, since it has its own rules. Using English as a base, it draws from a variety of vocabularies and grammar, including the Chinese dialect Hokkien and Malay.

This often makes it difficult for speakers of other English dialects to understand. The main difficulties in understanding are Singlish's unique slang and syntax, which are more pronounced in informal speech.

The Singaporean government has launched a "Good English" campaign to persuade the Singaporeans to use proper English, which often took the form of poster advertisements.

Sign in a toilet in Shanghai, instructing people to put used paper napkins in the wastebin

See also

• Franponais
• Globish
• Stereotypes of Asians
• Chinglish
• Konglish
• Taglish & Englog
• Spanglish
• Swenglish
• Finglish
• Hinglish
• Greenglish
• Franglais
• Denglish
• Non-native pronunciations of English
• List of dialects of the English language
• Faux Cyrillic a graphical embellishment combining Cyrillic with Latin text letters used in Western society
• Heavy metal umlaut
• Fawful
• All your base are belong to us
• We Drink Ritalin
• How to Good-Bye Depression

External links

• Engrish.com—Many examples of Engrish
• Engrish Corporate Slogans
• Nice Engrish Gallery
• Fahruz.org—A large collection of Engrish and other mangled European languages
• InnocentEnglish.com—More examples of Engrish
• Engrish on Syberpunk
• English to Engrish Translator
• another English to Engrish Translator
• Engrish on rinkworks.com
• Engrish in Video Games
• Engrish on Toys
• Engrish on photohappy.info—Engrish gallery
• Hanzi Smatter (一知半解)—Keeping track of the reverse of Engrish
• The Engrish Fanlisting
• [1][2][3][4][5]Examples of Engrish (large pictures)