Screwed Up English: Twisted Translations of the English Language from Around the World

by Charlie Croker

Spot art throughout Hotel sign in Athens,
Visitors are expected to complain at the office between the hours of 9 and 11 a.m. daily.

Menu in Bali,
Toes with butter and jam.
Pack of toy animals sold in Ranong,
Be careful of being eaten by small children.

Travelers beware! As the most commonly spoken language in the world, English has reached every corner of the globe-but sometimes the message gets scrambled along the way. Explore the very best (and worst) instances of unintentional communication comedy found in street signs, on menus, and in advertising-often the result of bad translation. Screwed Up English is the perfect traveling companion that proves why you shouldn't always believe what you read.

Charlie Croker is an author and journalist, and so can be relied upon to use the right words, sometimes even in the right order. His previous books include The Little Book of Beckham and A Game of Three Halves . He has written (with the help of a spellchecker) for publications including The Times, The Independent on Sunday , and The Spectator . He lives in the United Kingdom.

Genres: Humor, Nonfiction, Language

176 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2008

Reviews

[Manybooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

Charlie Croker's 2008 Screwed Up English: Twisted Translations of the English Language from Around the World most definitely starts out as being majorly fun and entertaining. And yes, I certainly was (and remain) laughing and often even rather loudly snorting at the oh so many strange and ridiculous translations of the English language from around the world I have encountered in Screwed Up English: Twisted Translations of the English Language from Around the World, but with me furthermore also very much appreciating that Croker has equally (even if not as all encompassingly) included examples from the United Kingdom and the USA, that Charlie Croker clearly shows in Screwed Up English: Twisted Translations of the English Language from Around the World that those of us who speak English as our first language (our so called mother tongue) still and also have the tendency to mangle English and to say and write ads, warnings, texts that can only be considered as being at best bloopers. And indeed, this fact in my humble opinion totally and thankfully renders Screwed Up English: Twisted Translations of the English Language from Around the World (and of course also Charlie Croker himself) as being much more inclusive than similar translation-themed tomes which basically often only seem to focus on "foreigners" horribly translating their languages into English and thus always for and to me feel even when I am finding the presented examples amusing and engaging denigrating and insulting.

But even though the examples provided by Charlie Croker are funny and often really massively so, the fact that Screwed Up English: Twisted Translations of the English Language from Around the World basically provides just lists, lists and more lists of weird and screwy translation examples and nothing more, this does (at least for me) get a bit tedious and dragging. And, while I read the first fifty odd pages of Screwed Up English: Twisted Translations of the English Language from Around the World in about half an hour, the rest of Screwed Up English: Twisted Translations of the English Language from Around the World actually took me days to complete, as I was finding the similarity of the examples (everything being same old same old) boring and totally a downer, so that I was often closing the book and only ended up finishing Screwed Up English: Twisted Translations of the English Language from Around the World because it was overdue at my local library (and while I do still recommend Screwed Up English: Twisted Translations of the English Language from Around the World, I do leave the caveat that Screwed Up English: Twisted Translations of the English Language from Around the World is definitely a book that works better being read in small chunks, since the constant and never-ending barrage of featured 'bad" translations can easily prove to become a reading chore and not a reading joy).

[Kristin · Rating 1 out of 5]

Screwed Up English was extremely inconsistent. It's supposed to be "hilarious" poor foreign to English translations, but it didn't really deliver. Oh, there were parts that made me smile, like "Please do not bathe in the bathtub. And there were even parts that made me laugh out loud with their unintentional irony such as, "We take your bags and send them in all directions." Unfortunately a lot of it was just nonsense like, "Not to perambulate the corridors in the hours of repose in the boots of ascension." And mostly, the message comes across. It's just a bit awkwardly worded. Honestly, their vocabulary is better than most Americans if not their grammar, and we couldn't do half as well translating into their language. It just can't keep my attention.

[Aimee · Rating 3 out of 5]

You will not gain a better understanding of our language or of other cultures. You *will* laugh out loud about "Total Quality Qontrol" and other translation/spelling gaffes. My DH read much of this book out loud to me, just to watch me crack up. It was fun.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

An airport purchase... it was hilarious all the way through. I pick it up from ime to time for a laugh... like a hotel sigh in Japan: "You are invited to take advantage of the chambermaid." Having made a number of mistranslations in my own life, I find some solace as well as humor in these.