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Good Engrish

Entry 283, on 2006-02-10 at 13:31:30 (Rating 2, Comments)

Last night I was asked to setup a digital alarm clock for my daughter. I am the tech expert in the family, so it is expected I will know how to make any electronic gadget perform. Well this little device was a little bit more obscure than most, so in desperation I consulted the manual. Did I mention this clock was made in China? Probably no need to, isn't everything made there now?

Needless to say, the manual wasn't very helpful, except as a source of humour. After half an hour I finally had the time and alarm time set (and set an alarm for her birthday, I think) but after the alarm failed to work this morning I guess I have to admit I missed something.

Anyway, the reason for this blog entry was to share some of the Engrish in this manual, which I found rather interesting. Here's some examples...

To set the "birthday reminds mode" do this: "Under the normal state, press the SET key to establish, combine below the row order". I sort of get the first two parts of that sentence, but this "row order" thing has really got me beat!

Here's another: "When the music scribe to open, can circulate to broadcast 7 different pop music". Not sure what a "music scribe" is in this context, but I managed to get some screechy one bit audio which might have been the pop music.

This is what I had to work on for the alarm: "If open the alarm clock only, but do not open snooze, then when the alarm clock arrive setting time, the alarm clock ring a minute. Keyed to arbitrarily stop ring. If opened snooze already, the alarm clock ring 3 minutes for 1 times, a minute of every time, totally ring for 4 times. The snooze sign gleam." Oh, OK, that explains it then!

I'm not trying to be disrespectful to Chinese people here, I'm sure I would make a total hash of doing a mechanical translation from English to Chinese. I guess if we want cheap stuff made by the "slave labour" force of China we will just have to improve our skills at Engrish!

Link at: http://www.engrish.com/

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