looking for funny mis-translations

Hi Leslie - There's a website for Japanese English (or 'Engrish') at www.engrish.com

BTW - I've linked to yr site. I'm regularly writing tripe out of Almeria

Later... Thanks mate!

Hi Lenox, thanks for the engrish lesson and the link!  I noticed it a while ago when I started to get the odd visitor from your site, and placed a reciprocal link on mine at the time… kept meaning to thank you but… (shuffles feet and remembers thank you note that was lost in the wash / eaten by large canary of the type probably indigenous to his island / given to an itinerant band of ghecko charmers on the strictest assurance that they were passing Almeira).

Anyway… back to lingo clangers.  I just remembered my worst, so as you’re there, I’ll share it with you.  Now my written Spanish is appalling, never having formally learnt the language.  I once wrote “… vamos a volver en un ano.” – we are going to return in an anus.  But I defend myself on 2 counts:  it was ages ago and an English keyboard.

To those without Spanish:
Año = year
Ano = embarrassing

The Spanish are as keen for foreigners' cash as the next person, and are a very friendly and amiable race withal. This translates as the second biggest tourist destination in the world, after France. It's also probably one of the top two or three preferred places for Brits to go and retire to.
With all this, the Spanish are never too keen to give money to foreigners (they might send it back to their starving families in London), so, when it comes to translating something into English, which may be, they would probably admit, a jolly good idea... they will prefer to use their own team.
You can imagine the scene '¡Joder! anybody here speak el inglés?'... 'You, right?, come on, two years at school has gotta be bastante'.
So you see adverts or billboards in Spanish and Engrish ('This establishement has complaining sheets') or ('equipped with and ended with luxury'), bootifully translated by Cousin Bertín.
Vamos amigos, I wouldda checked it for a beer.. or something...

I'm an avid collector of these gems and agree wholeheartedly with lenox. Every time I look at a restaurant menu that tries to tempt me with 'crap cakes' and the like, I wonder why they didn't get a native English speaker to do the translation, or at least to proofread their niece-who-thinks-she-speaks-English's efforts.

A tourism promotion brochure for the small town of La Linea (Cadiz, Andalucia) kind of sticks in my mind. It waxes lyrical about the limited delights of the town, and lists one of the local delicacies as 'sardines spit'.

Sardine Spit sounds good. Here, a popular fish (rapé) is usually known as rape in batter. Then, bulls balls country style to follow, a side-dish of chichen, fisch or something from 'the filth group'.