Allee Willis Blog » Bad translations

05Aug 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – LUCKY Medical Van

05Aug 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – LUCKY Medical Van

lucky-med-van

When it comes to naming your company I’m always fascinated when people come up with the most seemingly inappropriate names possible. I can think of a lot of things I’d be calling myself if I were being transported in this Medical Transportation vehicle but I doubt one of them would be “lucky”. This is the last place you would be if you were, in fact, “lucky”. Maybe the name has great psychological impact as the patient steps or is wheeled in through the doors. And I’m certainly not one to diminish the power of positive thinking. But I think I would want the driver or any personnel on board to be a little more connected to the reality of the medical situation. “Lucky” enough to hitch a ride, yes! “Lucky” to be in the van, no.

28Jul 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Japanese Paper Toilet Seat Cover Paste

28Jul 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Japanese Paper Toilet Seat Cover Paste

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I love Japanese convenience products born out of blended east and west needs and Pop Culture, especially ones by way of Vietnam as this toilet product is. In this case, not only are the translations awkward but the product is too. You affix these strips that look somewhere between oversized sanitary pads and shoe inserts on the rim of your toilet seat and then peel them off after you remove your “bottom”, only to use them again the next time you rest on the porcelain throne. Apparently, this saves you the trouble of washing the toilet seat or worrying that you’re going to be sitting on someone else’s nasty stuff. I, personally, would still be concerned as I don’t want to be bending over the facilities trying to flick up the end of some reusable Paper Toilet Seat Cover Paste. And what does that name mean anyway?

Are the pads/shoe inserts that are looking more and more like strips of sticky fly paper a toilet seat cover or are they paste? I don’t know that I want to be hovering over the bowl to come to a final decision. Besides, the full name of the product appears to be Paper Toilet Seat Cover Paste Well Type with Pattern. This would take an entire day of sitting on the toilet to try and figure out and I have a feeling that more solid fact would end up in the toilet than in my head.

One of my favorite things about this product is the slogan that equates a toilet with life itself.

I haven’t really found that there’s that direct of a relationship between the two.

“Unlike a conventional toilet seat, installation and removal is very easy.”

Well, uh, yeah, a toilet seat is an actual part with some weight and mechanics involved ensuring functionality and stability whereas the Paper Toilet Seat Cover Paste Well Type with Pattern is just two confusing strips of paper that forces one to make contact with the actual toilet seat while assuming that perhaps the person whose “bottom” occupied it before you did not have the benefit of owning their own Paper Toilet Seat Cover Paste Well Type with Pattern. This is not where I would want to be placing my hands to retrieve my fly strips.

For cleaning, just rinse with warm water. However, to most efficiently dry your seat covers one must find a “spin-drier” as opposed to using “a drying machine”.

What is a drying machine? A microwave? I don’t know about you but I don’t want anything I just pulled off my toilet anywhere near where I tweak my food.

It also says that if you choose natural drying you must keep the strips in the shade, paying attention “not to allow dust on the backside”.

It seems to me that the whole point of the strips in the first place is “not to allow dust on the backside”.

Further instructions for correct usage of Paper Toilet Seat Cover Paste Well Type with Pattern prove just as confusing as the name of the product itself. “Do not use clippers since use of such items results in traces on the absorption surfaces”.

I would be constipated by the time I really figured out what that meant.

And then there’s this: “be careful when washing or drying the sheets with the absorption surfaces facing each other that they do not permanently adhere together”.

Am I supposed to get inside the spin-dryer with the strips in order to prevent this?

All in all though I’m happy to own the Paper Toilet Seat Cover Paste Well Type with Pattern as it goes very nicely with what’s hugging my toilet right now, the “Warm Cover Of Toilet Bowl”, another toilet sensation from the Orient.

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Thank you, aKitschionado Margaret Lewis, for your generous contribution of one Paper Toilet Seat Cover Paste Well Type with Pattern to The Allee Willis Museum Of Kitsch at AWMOK.com!

27Jul 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Beethoven’s Fifth Popcorn

27Jul 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Beethoven’s Fifth Popcorn

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Other than the fact that it’s packaged in a 750ml bottle, the standard size vessel for champagne, the stretch to connect product with name is so thin and precarious here as to induce the medical condition known as Kitschago. As a writer, it’s painful to see so many plays on words in trying to make elements as disparate as popcorn and classical music seem connected. As a kitsch lover, however, it’s ecstasy. Let’s see, how many ways can we thwack the creative brain with a lead pipe and make this popcorn/ Beethoven connection work? The label, Château de Musica, implores the popcorn ingestee to “HANDEL with care”. I don’t understand what care it takes to eat “Le grand Pops” but if one does apparently HANDEL it wrong the bottler, RACH MANINOFF, guarantees “your money BACH”.

Unfortunately, the LISZT price isn’t stamped on the bottle. And I don’t know enough about classical music to know if Albert Elovitz has anything to do with the art form but somehow the military managed to get in on the wordplay as Distilled by credit goes to KERNEL Albert Elovitz.

Thankfully, the bottom of the bottle remains pun free.

I cringe when people send me really cheesy song lyrics to critique, so pun filled at times I find it necessary to tell them that connecting together a bunch of plays on words isn’t an original concept and rarely works unless something else so unique is tossed into the mix. In this case, it’s thankfully not a crappy song I have before me but a champagne bottle, vintage 1986, filled with popcorn. It may not be musical but it’s definitely what I would stock in the bar to serve with the cheese wheel at my next party.

And while we’re on the subject of Beethoven’s Fifth…

05Oct 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Doris Day Ashtray With Title Printed Wrong

05Oct 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Doris Day Ashtray With Title Printed Wrong

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This promotional ashtray was put out by Columbia Records in 1956 for their big star, Doris Day, and her big hit, “Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)”. It has an exalted place in my Kitsch kollection because the title is printed backwards: “Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera)”. Whether the record sharks felt the foreign language was above the audience’s head or the manufacturer, Ceramicraft, goofed remains something only Doris or her dogs might know the answer to.

This ashtray was one of the first things I found when I first started seriously collecting in the early 1970’s and I decided to start collecting pop music memorabilia as a result of finding it. It came as a set with “Sixteen Tons” by Tennessee Ernie Ford.

I love this ashtray not only for the Kitsch title scramble but for the sentimental fact that my first job out of college was at Columbia Records, though long after Doris’s day had passed.

This ashtray was one of the first things I found when I first started seriously collecting in the early 1970’s and I decided to start collecting pop music memorabilia as a result of finding it. It came as a set with “Sixteen Tons” by Tennessee Ernie Ford.

I love this ashtray not only for the Kitsch title scramble but for the sentimental fact that my first job out of college was at Columbia Records, though long after Doris’s day had passed.

17Aug 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Touch O’ Soul Pantyhose

17Aug 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Touch O’ Soul Pantyhose

Touch-o-Soul-pantyhose_3094

Yes, the name and graphic are fantastic but couldn’t they have spent a little more time thinking about their target customer before they named the shade “Off Black”?! I’m pretty sure what shade the marketing guy at the Standard Hoisery Co. of Brandon, Miss. was… Not to mention that ‘pantyhose’ is one word.

29Jul 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Lovin’ ‘More Healthy More Beauty’ Soft Skin Towel

29Jul 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Lovin’ ‘More Healthy More Beauty’ Soft Skin Towel

Lovin-Soft-Skin-Towel-cut_1303

I love this packaging so much that if I ever chose to actually use this thing I’d scrub myself with the plastic on. The Photoshoped suds with the totally artificial drip pattern, the Disco-y lettering of Lovin’, the pink of the towel against the bleached pink of the skin – all kwintessential Kitsch aspects of this “More Healthy More Beauty” body scrubber.

The translations on the back, though not as off as I Lovin them to be, still suffer from bad punktuation, grammar and spelling. For example, the towel helps “bad circularion”.

The mesh towel inside looks pretty rough – I don’t dare ruin the packaging to confirm – altho not of the strength of a loofah which it’s clearly patterned after.

I also love the simplicity of the directions: “To avoid soap suds from rinsing away, keep Lovin’ towel away from the direct flow of water.” Anyone who doesn’t know that before they use the towel doesn’t deserve to be scrubbin’ with the Lovin’ in the first place.

I love this packaging so much that if I ever chose to actually use this thing I’d scrub myself with the plastic on. The Photoshoped suds with the totally artificial drip pattern and same yellow hue as the towel, the Disco-y lettering of Lovin’, the pink of the towel against the bleached pink of the skin – all kwintessential Kitsch aspects of this “More Healthy More Beauty” body scrubber.

The translations on the back, though not as off as I Lovin them to be, still suffer from bad punktuation, grammar and spelling. For example, the towel helps “bad circularion”.

The mesh towel inside looks pretty rough – I don’t dare ruin the packaging to confirm – altho not of the strength of a loofah which it’s clearly patterned after.

I also love the simplicity of the directions: “To avoid soap suds from rinsing away, keep Lovin’ towel away from the direct flow of water.” Anyone who doesn’t know that before they use the towel doesn’t deserve to be scrubbin’ with the Lovin’ in the first place.

22Jul 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Tickles Tapeworm Bad Translation Pencil Case/Wallet

22Jul 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Tickles Tapeworm Bad Translation Pencil Case/Wallet

tickles-tapeworm

“Good day. Tapeworm of the Tickles. The stomach living within is for fun. Likes much the good food, Great friends are we to the extremity. Love me Tapeworm.” I LOVE bad translations and this 8″x3″ of plastic wonderfulness is among the best!

Tickles served as my billfold for the past four years until the plastic rebelled and one day little tapeworm-like rips appeared all over it. I reluctantly retired it to Kitsch Museum heaven but miss pulling it out to get my money and smiling as I dig intoTickles.

“Good day. Tapeworm of the Tickles. The stomach living within is for fun. Likes much the good food, Great friends are we to the extremity. Love me Tapeworm.” I LOVE bad translations and this 8″x3″ of plastic wonderfulness is among the best!

Made by Parasite Pals, Tickles served as my billfold for the past four years until the plastic rebelled and one day little tapeworm-like rips appeared all over it. I reluctantly retired it to Kitsch Museum heaven but miss pulling it out to get my money and smiling as I say hello to Tickles.

15May 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – “Warm Cover Of Toilet Bowl”

15May 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – “Warm Cover Of Toilet Bowl”

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Boasting that it’s to be “applied in modern families, hotels, various round toilet bowls”, the packaging for this “warm cover of toilet bowl”, is another spectacular example of translations gone awry. It’s made of “acryl” (new fiber made in China?), “imported rubber band” (wow) “anti-bacterium” (as opposed to the ever popular “bacterial”?), “smell proof” (thank God) and is/are “international fashion domestic decorations, sanitary necessities”. I’m not quite clear of the difference between “Keep warm in winter, comfortable, heath care and sanitary” and “Use & warm in winter, comfortable, heath care and sanitary” though clearly the translator felt both were worthy of a line. In case of soiling “avoid washing with bleacher” or the “high elastic nylon” will fry up faster than a polyester Disco shirt. Made in China by Shu Mei Lia, there’s no year on the package but I would say it’s timeless.

05Apr 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Translator Has Field Day With Picnic Basket

05Apr 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Translator Has Field Day With Picnic Basket

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The translator for this field cargo (translation: picnic basket) over-exercised their flair for capturing the spirit of the American picnic-goer by naming the product Profit and selling that hot dog and potato salad feeling as “The blue sky makes me generous and the vast sea invites me to ‘love’. The breeze passing over my cheek make my mind gentle.” Cheese on that burger, anyone?