Engrish Adventures

In Asia we get to experience the phenomena of "Engrish" quite often.  While most people in educated Asian countries know at least some English vocabulary, they usually have limited training in it's spelling, grammar, and sentence structure (most Asian sentence structures have a reversed arrangement of the subject/verb when compared to English).  In addition problems also result from poor translating skills because substituting a similar but slightly incorrect or inappropriate word can often drastically change the meaning of a sentence.  All this however doesn't seem to stop Asians from regularly using their (non proofread) English skills on everything from menu and signs to printed words on clothing.


As you can imagine, this provides an endless opportunity for chuckles as we go about our daily lives here.  Below is a picture of one of the funniest Engrish examples I have seen to date.  I hesitated to share it because it uses an expletive which I have edited in the picture.  I hope no one is offended. . .after all, I am pretty certain  its just the result of the writer making a poor world translation selection and was not intended to be a curse word.


My two favorite parts of this sign are 1) the accompanying pictorial example (how long did they follow the dog around to get this shot?) and 2) the use of the word "prohibition".  Every time I read it all I can think of are little Asian mafia men in suits sneaking around with their smuggled brown paper bags of dog doo.