Devil Candy
December 17, 2009 by Patrick Madrid
Filed under Patrick's Blog
Perhaps you’ve heard of “Engrish”, the term for the often hilariously ludicrous malapropisms committed by Japanese when translating into English? Here’s something I ran across awhile back that, coming from China, could be called “Chingrish.”
If anyone knows what’s going on here, please share.
sounds like cocaine
"Interesting, Parvenu. I would have expected guffaws from your Chinese friend."
No guffaws, just a series of confused looks as he read and re-read the Chinese text trying to decide if there was any sense to it. My guess is that this description had been translated through a couple languages before it was rendered into Chinese.
A colleague of mine (who is chinese) translated it for me:
It says it is a lolly pop shapen like a devil with some kind of filling in it.
Also you can use the stick as a whistle (your friends too!) after you have eaten the lolly pop.
—
@Parvenu74
Perhaps the person who wrotre this note was NOT versatile in both english and chinese alike 😛
Interesting, Parvenu. I would have expected guffaws from your Chinese friend. Thanks.
As for me, I interpret it to mean that it's some kind of red-hot candy around a bubblegum center (aren't they called "Charm Pops" here in the US?), so after you've eaten the candy you can blow bubbles with the gum. Does that make sense?
I emailed this to a Chinese coworker. He said it's actually a very good translation but that the original Chinese makes no sense.
Ok, I'm just guessing here, the "candy" is spicy, hence the reason "stick can be used by friends to blow." Just guessing. I do know one thing for sure, it makes me want to "toot horn melodiously" (as if there were any other way to toot a horn).
I am so fascinated by this stuff I am tempted to learn Chinese just so I can determine what they originally meant to say. Then I'd go around to these places and offer to re-translate their tragedies.