Français: Je suis dans la douleur de penser à tout la futilité de la conquête normande. Pourquoi avons-nous même pas la peine? Bien sûr, ils ont reçu un quelques mots, comme garage et ménage à troix, mais les sauvages primitifs encore appelez l’eau «water», et non pas «eau».
Oh, et appuyez sur «On» pour le ON et OFF pour éteint. LOUD rend plus fort. Et maintenant, mon mal à la tête déjà.
Deutsch: Die stolzen deutschen Volkes grüßen euch für diesen Kauf.
Ein Volk, ein Verstärker. Drücken Sie ON für EIN und OFF für AUS.
Español: Queremos que usted disfrute de este dispositivo. Con todo nuestro corazón. Reproduce tu música a todo volumen. Si algunos gringo no le gusta, le llaman racista al.
Русский: Да, мы говорили, что “Мы вас похороним” Этого не произошло Вы ждали в очереди по три..
дней, чтобы купить этот гаджет. Просто включите его. Если это не работает, используйте молоток.
English: Finally, a real f*cking language that normal people can read! Hit the ‘ON switch to
turn it on, the OFF to turn it off, and ‘LOUDER’ to make it louder. Jezuz, how tough is that?
Wu: So this is what you go through just to get the stupid hair-dryer to run?Me: Oui/Ja/Si/
Да/Yup. But all it plays in ‘Blowing in the Wind’. Prolly something I’m doing wrong...
Comments (36)
Did you put that through Google translator a few times? Actually, the French sounds the way English looks on signs here. Complex, confusing, and completely craptastic. Thanks for the laugh.
Для темных это замша, что косит, как урожай.
Why do you want your hair dryer LOUDER???? I wish mine had a QUIETER switch. Of course, if it could run quietly, one wonders why anyone would ever want it to run loudly, so I suppose a switch isn’t necessary, strictly speaking.
@elgan - As an artist, I was going for exactly that fractured feel. User’s Manual-speak. On the French I blindly trusted Google to do it for me. The ‘head-ache’ part near the end ‘feels’ especially odd. Gives me un dolor de la cabeza grande. You’re welcome to re-do it. I need to get the hair-dryer off of repeat-play.
@ordinarybutloud - Of course the joke is that, by counting on the Babel of instructions, one often doesn’t even remember what the hell the device was supposed to do.
I usually scan the English first, and if it’s a shameful mess of gibberish, I read each of the competitors to guess what the original language might have been. But sometimes they are all equally flawed.
@jsolberg - Ah. For myself, if the instructions are in more than one language, or if they are in one language and it’s not English, I ditch the instructions altogether and look at the picture on the box.
@HappierHeathen - I’m tempted to say “Yer *Momma’s* a dark suede harvest mower!” but it just might be true.
@ordinarybutloud - Well, I tried that, but it’s a poorly-reproduced scan of a Polaroid shot at about 300 yards of a guy/girl/duck? holding what looks like a gun to its head. Big hair though. For a duck, at least. No real help.
Vous êtes drôle, vous êtes, mon petit poulet plucker israélienne
Can you even get Polaroid film anymore?? Where did you acquire this appliance, may I ask?
Mandarin? Arabic? Allons! Il nous manque les langues essentiel du siecle vingt-et-un! Merde, je n’ai meme l’accent grave ni circumflex! Ich glaube Sie wohnen noch in historische Zeiten.
My point, if I may be so bold, is the Mormon invasion is well documented. The Norman invasion is not.
@jsolberg - For the fundamental truth self-determination of the cosmos, indeed it may be true.
Suddenly it all seems to make so much more sense.
So true to type – the Germans are succinct and the Spanish touchy feely… and the Americans typically foul mouthed – and I’m not talking about chickens!
@murisopsis - Perfect, and does me warm to see you note that. This was a quick idea, and I could have done it better. Next time.
@ordinarybutloud - Well ‘Country of Origin’ on the fictional (you guessed that?) appliance is listed as “Micronesia”, which at least explains the font-size in the manual. The polaroid anecdote was from a toilet-guts kit from Mexico 20 years ago. I looked at it and burst out laughing. They had the nerve to think I could identify 15 little pieces, in a picture which was barely recognizable even as a toilet.
Melayu: saya memerlukan perisian komputer yang akan menetapkan sinki dapur saya malam ini.Salah satu hari ini saya akan mempelajari bahasa Ibrani, jadi saya juga boleh membuang jampi-jampi sihir.Arahan ini keluar kepada semua pencinta: buang selepas digunakan atau apabila tidak berkuat kuasa.
@Lovegrove - No, not one feather was disturbed on my watch, at least not by moi. And mazal tov on your goose egg!
@we_deny_everything - Haha. Clever. Yeah, where’s Esperanto when ya need it? The aliens must be laughing their asses off, if they have asses. They have one language per star system, we can’t even communicate between two adjacent Borneo-ese islands. That ‘Mormon invasion’ of yours may be a ‘first-use’ neologism. Proud to even know you.
To Dirtbubble (Proxy won’t let me hit ‘Reply’)
Aha, you found that mysterious source-language for the gadget, although it does cite a rumoured primeval influence text, lying broken on Mt Sinai. At least the ‘one-size-fits-all’ instructions can apply to marriage and kitchen appliances with equal ease. Mingus Ah Um would agree.
@dirtbubble - My reply above. The Swedish server knocked me off Xanga for a while, and the french proxy doesn’t like ‘Reply’ as a legit subroutine.
@jsolberg -
One of my chickens went to explain herself to Saint Peter the gate keeper sooner than she may have anticipated. Not sure why. It wasn’t the cold.Must have been a bug but she’s had her wake and now she sleeps with the fishes.
Not to change the subject or anything, but I’m starting to get nervous about not knowing how to speak or read Chinese.
@twoberry - It’s really very simple” “Ensure to aDhere {to} It /Not/ All aLien bOdies! translates as ‘keep this (wheel-bearing kit) clean.’ And then just extrapolate from there.
Seriously, Mandarin seems to me to be about as alien a tongue as an sci-fi writer could imagine. Forget UFOs, they already own half of your town, and there’s about a million new ones born every three days. All of ‘em inscrutable and believers in who knows? goat’s-wing potions to cure diphtheria. They are all over Israel these days, doing under-the-table floor-tile work. For cheap-skates who don’t mind trying to communicate via arm-waving. I watch and feel like acupuncturing my eyes out.
@Lovegrove - I’m sad to hear that. My Arab chickens seem to be immune to everything except maybe marauding jackals.
I’m so happy you guys have a nice menagerie going in Gaul. Post some pix sometime. You can always title it ‘God watches every sparrow’s fall Y/N?’
Not much of a menagerie really. No Midianites here. two ducks and two geese (garcons and filles) and five hens. This morning there was just the one hen egg. This cold has really slowed down the laying.
Oh yes, and a big red cock, but we don’t talk about that.
@we_deny_everything - I had an undocumented Norman move in next door once. I was coming home to 1064 with some Danish and spied him Hastingly unpacking saxons of clothes. I wasn’t ready for that I’ll tell you.
1)Ve have vays of finding out vy you vant Herr Dryer to run ! Und if the instructions you kan readen vile the machine ich bin usen then is not the head herren that be dried!
2)Instructions are never written in Welsh. We are a nice mix of people too clever to need instructions and illuterrates.
@gnostic1 - I rang the company, requested instructions for Wales. Ha, they sent me an audio file(?). Made junk out of my woofers. Pissed off, I called back: “Can I even use this thing in Wales?” “Yeah, but you’ll need a long, waterproof extension cord, plus you have to prop the mouth open to see what you’re doing.” I gave up.
Took fewer words in German, so for efficiencies sake, I recommend everyone learn German.
What if words are a limited resource … what a waste.
Speaking of waste – hair dryer? Don’t you live in a desert?
Louder? I want one. I want a louder hair dryer. Oh ya. Volume and grooming. Yes. Yes.
The French back-translation is amazingly perfect, and contains this wonderful line: “primitive savages call water “water”, not “water”.
The Spanish is great up until the last sentence.
I rarely look at instructions unless it’s something really high-tech or a ceiling fan with fancy screw-covering parts.
Finally a translator that doesn’t pretend to say the same things to every audience.
@Roadkill_Spatula - gee thanks’ the Sp and Ger I wrote myself, just used translate to fix the accents and umlauts. Kinda embarrassed about the sp last sentence..it was all I knew how to write.
Ha, here everything has at least three languages of instructions, and I have great fun comparing them, like with the Rosetta Stone.
@blonde_apocalypse - Good eye; yes, that was my plan, even wanted every tongue to be saying something snide about its neighbors.
I coulda taken this a lot farther, but I finished it in a hurry. Maybe next version… (Thought of you with the German calling it a Verstarker, as in “hair amplifier”.
@chromepoet - A whole bunch of jokes here which I didn’t pursue well; the duh confusion as to what the device even *is*, for one. The Russian ver. says to use a hammer on it.
And I’ve never owned a hair-dryer. Unless a Makita heat-gun counts in a pinch.
@jsolberg - Oh, I think you nailed it. User Manuals for everyone. Because we do not understand “on”.
@jsolberg - Very nice! Thanks for the chuckle.