わたしは日本人なので、Engrishのおもしろさがよくわかりません。
どなたか説明してください。
For example, about this infamous phrase:
All your base are belong to us
I know it's grammatically incorrect, but is it the only reason of that internet phenomenon?
And this site...
http://engrish.com/detail.php?imagename=battlerangers.jpg&category=Video%20Games&date=2003-04-11
I can hardly understand...
>>1 It may have been funny when it came out, but now it's barely funny anymore.
The main fun at the time, I think, was that many photoshops got done with that text in it.
In other words, it was a neta/meme that was successful for a while.
A neta can be anything, from any country. I recall a picture of a protester in the US who was holding a panel "Get educated, you moran!" (moron). That picture went around for a while on the internet and is now gone.
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engrish
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_your_base_are_belong_to_us
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme
>2 Thx. So when someone makes fun of that Engrish phrase, it gets funnier.
What's the condition of funny Engrish?
fly <-> fry mistake must be funny.
How about...
a <-> the mistake
singular <-> plural mistake
-s for third person singular present form mistake (ex. move <-> moves)
tense mistake (ex. have shown <-> had shown)
Can they be funny?
Plus,
http://engrish.com/detail.php?imagename=samshowprune.gif&category=Video%20Games&date=2002-10-04
What's the fun of this line?
>Can they be funny?
Depends on the context. Plain like that, it's not very funny.
>My spirit burns like the sun and
>I shall dry you like a prune.
It sounds awkward.
Twice, "like" is used.
"And" is too plain for connecting two phrases.
And the sun is supposed to be the one drying the prune, so why is "I" chosen to be the subject in the second phrase?
Let's rewrite this:
"My burning spirit will dry you like a prune under the sun!"
Already better: shorter sentence, no double phrase, and an exclamation point to show the fighter's spirit. It still needs more work, though.
>>3
This is actually really simple. "I shall dry you like a prune" is simply not what a tough guy would say in the U.S.
What Sling said is right, but it just adds an air of English to a totally ridiculous sentence.
Can you guys rewrite `all your base are belong to us'?
is the sentence `all your bases belong to us' right?
The proper translation, as given by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_your_base_are_belong_to_us :
Japanese:
「君達の基地は、全てＣＡＴＳがいただいた。」
Literal:
"CATS has taken over all of your bases."
Not literal:
"We are now in control of Earth!"
>is the sentence `all your bases belong to us' right?
Yes it's ok, as a literal translation.
>>7
thank you.
We Japanese can use correct grammer but it is hard to understand what is correct expression as a native. So we need to hire English native or rewrite native writings.
Creator of Toh-a Plan may be DQN. I may be.
なとりのとろろ
I suppose our metaphors and expressions are our equivalent of kanji. Loosely perhaps.
>>11
Um, why not? Plenty of bilingual people out there...
And trilingual. And quadrilingual...
Example, in some areas of Switzerland, they speak fluently French, Italian, German and English.
A language becomes natural if one is immersed in it on a daily basis. A few years should do the trick.
Wasn't it mistranslated because of the Japanese sentence structure? Verbs always go at the end. Take a simple example:
なおこ は けんじ と すし を 食べます。
Literally: Naoko is Kenji with sushi eating.
Flip it around to make sense in English: Naoko eats sushi with Kenji.
12>>
I meant truly fluently natural. Learning as a second language one will never get that "feel" for a language. Unless you learn from childhood. Bilingual doesn't mean "native" level speaker
Why was AYBABTU funny in the first place? It was all about CATS.
Evil Space Overlords (Darth Vader, Ming the Merciless, Megatron, etc) all tend to speak in the same haughty, precise, archaic language, as if every word they utter is to be chronicled somewhere. And then along comes CATS, your stereotypical Evil Space Overlord right down to the facial deformity, arrogantly issuing threats, only in broken english.
Then the photoshops came, broadcasting this dire message everywhere into our daily lives.>>1
やっと理解した日本人からいわせてもらおう。
想像してみてくれ、こういうシーンだ。
謎の男に両親を殺された。
敵を討とうとあらゆる手段を使って男を捜し出した。
やっとたどり着いた頃には主人公はもうボロボロ。
傷を突かれて絶体絶命の主人公。
悪役「フフフ、貴様ももう終わりだ！」
主人公「畜生ー！」
悪役「とどめだあ！死ぬー！」
>>3
Engrish itself was funny some time ago, but it not now. It's pretty much difficult to impress anyone with fly - fry now. Joke itself must be fun, and if it is, engrishness makes it more spicy. Although ones like this can be funny too, from time to time. http://engrish.com/detail.php?imagename=battlerangers.jpg&category=Video%20Games&date=2003-04-11
YOU!INVADERS!
GET YOU THE
HOT BULLETS
OF SHOTGUN
TO DIE!
The only displaced word is "YOU", if you remove it the phrase is gramatically correct (noone speaks like that though); when it's there it fucks up the whole phrase, so when you are guessing what this guy really wanted to say, "YOU" will be the last word you'll try to throw out. This takes more time than understanding that someone wanted to say fly instead of fry, and maybe the thought that you spent so much time thinking about such nonsence makes you feel funny..