Friday
Apr192013
Lost In Translation
April 19, 2013 Somewhere in Japan...
Baker #1: "So the couple getting married this weekend wants 'United Forever in Love' written on their wedding cake, but they want it in English. UG. Where's our English dictionary?"
Baker #2: "Oh, please. Just copy a few lines off this old box of Twinkies! No one will ever know."
Before you ask: Yes, this really is the cake from a Japanese wedding. Judy A.'s daughter is an exchange student there, and took the photo. No word on what the couple really wanted their cake to say, but hey, it could have been worse! They could have gotten matching tattoos that said "crazy diarrhea." :D
Thanks for the cultural exchange, Judy!
Reader Comments (63)
"Enough of the fresh stuff!"
That's my guess. Someone was being fresh and needed to be told to knock it of...but told with a cake.
Plausible, no?
Just like Amanda, I too immediately recognized it as a Fawlty Towers quote, so it is quite possibly intentional.
Nothing to see here; carry on...
OK, it's from Fawlty Towers... Huh!? What kind of bizarre wedding cake has an obscure Fawlty Towers line on it? I wonder if that popped up when they were looking for something else. The usual Omar Khayyam verse or Irish folk blessing. Must be an interesting couple if it was intentional.
Lol. Maybe it means tons of strawberries and cream on top? I would certainly eat that cake unless it has a hidden surprise inside. Then they can keep their quantities of things. Sometimes if a cake looks too good to eat it usually has hidden horrors around somewhere.
I very much doubt this is a Japanese wedding cake. Anyone who has ever lived in Japan would know that no bakery here would sell such a messy looking cake. The Engrish does fit, but not the cake. Here is what one would more likely expect to see in a wedding https://www.google.com/search?q=Japanese+wedding+cake&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=kIdyUe3EG43ikAWl5YGACA&ved=0CDAQsAQ&biw=1024&bih=643
I just have one question...... WHY STILL ACTUALLY USE IT AT YOUR WEDDING???
Hahahahhaaaaa!!! If, for my wedding, I get a cake wreck, you can be SURE that some baker somewhere is scraping cake out of his nose, mouth & eyeballs!
Ooo, lots of pretty in that image search.
Hahahaaaa, Fawlty Towers Epcot!!! I was actually watching Fawlty Towers today, just now, and heard the phrase "sufficient quantities of the fresh articles" and it rang a bell...then I remembered I saw it on this cake. EXCELLENT. Now, the question is....is that deliberate, or is it really a translation gaffe? xD
Yeah, lots of fresh fruit. I bet that's it!
We lived in Japan for 3 years and its rife with "shopping bag English" which are phrases in English that sound great to the Japanese ear, whether or not it makes sense, whether or not it's obscene - you see them all the time on the sides of shopping bags as well as clothing and accessories.
For purposes of this cake though, I'd guess what they wanted to say something to the effect of "The Real Thing," which makes perfect sense as a wedding statement of and to the happy couple.
In all fairness, this isn't as bad as those people who buy foreign language emblazoned products, or worse, who get foreign language tattoos, without knowing exactly what they mean. Wasn't there a big scandal where a clothing manufacturer sold t-shirts, which were mostly bought by teenage girls, that said "good but cheap" in Chinese?
I knew a girl in high school who parodied that stupidity by purposely having the Chinese character for "refrigerator" tattooed on her ankle. It was actually very pretty.
I'm a translator, and it seems to me that the Japanese (the Chinese, too) intentionally mangle the English language when translating product labels, ads, and signs. English is a second language in those countries, everyone studies the language, and they emulate the U.S. culture quite a lot, so they ought to have a clue.
I actually got a reference. Thanks to my hours of Fawlty Towers watching .. it was good for something!