Engrish.com long ago popularized instances of English that’s just “not quite right,” mostly from Japan, where non-native speakers of English have mangled translations into non-comprehensability or unintentional humor. (HanziSmatter.com does something similar in reverse with bad Chinese Character tattoo renderings in the West.)

These aren’t by any stretch among the best finds in this category, but here are a few English language snafus I’ve spotted here lately.

Wheat City: Happly Birtherday to You!

My Wife’s Younger Sister’s Husband had a birthday recently, and his party somehow ended up with two large cakes; they sent one of them over to our home, and I found the package to be photo-worthy. The company making the cake is called “Wheat City,” and they took the liberty of expanding “Happy Birthday to You!” into “Happly Birtherday to You!”

It’s the thought that counts, I guess.

Another one. A paper manufacturing company here has launched a line of products called “Mind Act Upon Mind.” Kind of a weird moniker on a roll of toilet paper, where I would think it’s more “Paper Act Upon…”, oh, well, nevermind.

A few days ago during one of the factory visits I’m making here, I passed a sign with Chinese on it that should have been translated as “Employees Only Beyond This Point,” but instead was rendered “No Staff, No Admittance.”

After that I kept thinking of things like, “No blood, no foul”; “No Pain, No Gain”; “No Woman, No Cry”; and “No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service.”

And the doozy.

The tea set given to me by the multi-millionaire I mentioned in an earlier post came complete with a product description on the inside of the box lid.

It reads–and I’ve take care to reproduce spelling, punctuation and word spacing exactly:

Jade Grease porcelain is named by yt’s jade and rouge nutural,it was created by Mr.minglong Den who is one of Fujian folk artist.Jade and Grease procelain is made of fine mineral around Dehua which is conbine four kinds of best kaoline, expecially feldspar mineral. Afer long terms examination,it got the new technic fill a preseription , inheritting the Dehua tranditional artwork of white porcelain, even used exquisite hand-crafts which is popular in the world with amass worthiness, It becoming one kind of newly well-know Dehua porcerlain in home and abroad. It showing crystal and lucency, rich and plentiful, pure and clean, thinner and sounder. It creditably the porcelain masterwork.

China white (Dehua white porcelain) ,it’s name “white porcelain”,not only white and lucency,but also soft and thin ,expecially showing white with a little yellow.So Jade and Grease porcelain is famous in the world owing to it’s easily distortion. Expecial the cup bowl of tea set, It focused the merit of hand scaldpess,rolling tea,keeping thot and so on .If any pollute,Please use toothpaste or bleacher.

Remarks:This is top grade porcelain,Please clean the cup and cover separately in ovder to avoid breakage.