Illuminati-R-Us

Please join me in remembering a great icon of the entertainment community. The Pillsbury Doughboy died yesterday of a yeast infection and trauma complications from repeated pokes in the belly. He was 71 and rollin in dough.

Doughboy was buried in a lightly greased coffin. Dozens of celebrities turned out to pay their respects, including Mrs. Butterworth, Hungry Jack, the California Raisins, Betty Crocker, the Hostess Twinkies, and Captain Crunch. The grave site was piled high with flours.

Aunt Jemima delivered the eulogy and lovingly described Doughboy as a man who never knew how much he was kneaded. Born and bread in Minnesota, Doughboy rose quickly in show business, but his later life was filled with turnovers.. He was not considered a very smart cookie, wasting much of his dough on half- baked schemes. Despite being a little flaky at times, he still was a crusty old man and was considered a positive roll model for millions.

Doughboy is survived by his wife Play Dough, three children: John Dough, Jane Dough and Dosey Dough, plus they had one in the oven. He is also survived by his elderly father, Pop Tart.

The funeral was held at 3:50 for about 20 minutes.

^ Not for the Doughboy. For that joke!

(Man, is that one stale. )

Doh boy!

Texts like these show me there is a gaping chasm which divides the competent foreign lnguage speaker from a native. Very sobering.

And of course, extremely funny!

Idiom and cultural references are fun, and I am sure opaque to the foreigner.

I often wonder how something like, "Hey, why don;t we catch a flick, then grab a six on the way home?" translates into some other tongue. Not how would one say it there, but whether it even makes sense to someone speaking Chinese, or German for that matter.

Enzo wrote:Idiom and cultural references are fun, and I am sure opaque to the foreigner.

I often wonder how something like, "Hey, why don;t we catch a flick, then grab a six on the way home?" translates into some other tongue. Not how would one say it there, but whether it even makes sense to someone speaking Chinese, or German for that matter.

Have a look at the "mistranslations" section at the very bottom of this page

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literal_translation

for a legendary example of a failed computer translation :P

"Out of sight, out of mind."


Of course...


"The invisible are insane."

Heh. From a few years back on the internet.

Cracking an international market is a goal of most growing
corporations. It shouldn't be that hard, yet even the big
multi-nationals run into trouble because of language and
cultural differences. For example...


The name Coca-Cola in China was first rendered as
Ke-kou-ke-la. Unfortunately, the Coke company did not
discover until after thousands of signs had been printed that the
phrase means "bite the wax tadpole" or "female horse
stuffed with wax" depending on the dialect. Coke then researched
40,000 Chinese characters and found a close
phonetic equivalent, "ko-kou-ko-le," which can be loosely
translated as "happiness in the mouth."


In Taiwan, the translation of the Pepsi slogan "Come alive
with the Pepsi Generation" came out as "Pepsi will bring your
ancestors back from the dead."


Also in Chinese, the Kentucky Fried Chicken slogan "finger-lickin'
good" came out as "eat your fingers off."


The American slogan for Salem cigarettes, "Salem - Feeling Free,"
got translated in the Japanese market into "When smoking Salem,
you feel so refreshed that your mind seems to be free and empty."


When General Motors introduced the Chevy Nova in South
America, it was apparently unaware that "no va" means "it
won't go." After the company figured out why it wasn't
selling any cars, it renamed the car in its Spanish markets to
the
Caribe.


Ford had a similar problem in Brazil when the Pinto flopped. The
company found out that Pinto was Brazilian slang for
"tiny male genitals". Ford pried all the nameplates off and
substituted Corcel, which means horse.


When Parker Pen marketed a ballpoint pen in Mexico, its
ads were supposed to say "It won't leak in your pocket and
embarrass you." However, the company mistakenly thought the
spanish
word "embarazar" meant embarrass. Instead the ads said that "It
wont
leak in your pocket and make you pregnant."


An American t-shirt maker in Miami printed shirts for the
spanish market which promoted the Pope's visit. Instead of the
desired "I Saw the Pope" in Spanish, the shirts proclaimed "I Saw
the
Potato."


Chicken-man Frank Perdue's slogan, "It takes a tough man to
make a tender chicken," got terribly mangled in another Spanish
translation. A photo of Perdue with one of his birds appeared on
billboards all over Mexico with a caption that explained "It takes
a
hard man to make a chicken aroused."


Hunt-Wesson introduced its Big John products in French
Canada as Gros Jos before finding out that the phrase, in
slang, means "big breasts." In this case, however, the name
problem did not have a noticeable effect on sales.


Colgate introduced a toothpaste in France called Cue, the name
of a notorious porno mag.


In Italy, a campaign for Schweppes Tonic Water translated the
name into Schweppes Toilet Water.


Japan's second-largest tourist agency was mystified when it
entered English-speaking markets and began receiving requests for
unusual sex tours. Upon finding out why, the owners of Kinki
Nippon
Tourist Company changed its name.


In an effort to boost orange juice sales in predominantly
continental breakfast eating England, a campaign was
devised to extoll the drink's eye-opening, pick-me-up
qualities. Hence the slogan, "Orange juice. It gets your pecker
up."