Engrish

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Engrish refers to an English language phrase that arose through poor translation of another language (usually Japanese) into English, or sometimes, poor translation of English into another language followed by good translation back into English. Engrish usually just refers to poorly formed Japanese English. The spelling reflects the Japanese's inability to separate R and L. Bad Chinese English is often referred to as Chinglish. This used to be a frequent occurrence with product manuals, which might say something like "to make speed up find up out document", but it's less frequent today.

Another source of poor translation is an unchecked machine-produced translation, such as that from the Babelfish service.

The term is (at least sometimes) considered pejorative, as it ridicules people whose native language is not English. In comparison, English speakers who embarrass themselves trying to speak other languages are sometimes described as embarazado.

For instance, guitarist Eric Clapton becomes "Eric Crapton", "baseball" becomes "basuburo". The more ridiculous and humorous is the mangling, the more likely people are to classify it as "Engrish".

The phrase "all your base are belong to us" from the game Zero Wing is a well-known example of "Engrish".


The Babelfish translation service

Many examples of Engrish from Japan