Translations into English occasionally go slightly awry, giving an off kilter nuance to a simple word or phrase. I'm sure we've all encountered this in the the odd, and very often amusing translations of instructions into English.
Colloquialisms are also particularly difficult for non-native English speakers. I remember a vendor once tried to convince me to buy his product because it sold like "hot-dogs." Another one once said, by way of consolation, "Don't worry, it's small peanuts." I love these little absurdities and the phrase, "small peanuts" is now forever incorporated into my vocabulary.
Simple efforts to be straight forward also lead to unintentional accidents of language. Sometimes something wonderfully funny happens when telling it like it is, no frills, straight out.
I see this most often in business names. Again, a lot of stores with these sorts of names are located in ethnic neighborhoods. I'm pretty sure the names are simply a result of very literal translations into English.
Here's one
of my favorites, the Decent Convenient Store,
located on Clark Street just north of Foster Avenue in Chicago, IL.
I feel certain it must be related to the now defunct restaurant on Devon Avenue which was named Pretty Good Food. Unfortunately, I never got that photo, so you'll just have to take my word for it. And, unfortunately I also missed the chance to document the Alien Travel Agency, before they changed their name to the Aline Travel Agency. I think they wanted to be frugal and used up the letters they already had when they made that change.
I do, however,
have photos of the House of 220 Volt Appliances, also located on
Devon Avenue in Chicago. Perhaps they also refer people to the Adequate
Electric Contractors.
I have studied some other languages so I know I must have been guilty of making a fair number of unintentional errors of my own, and I really don't intend to be derogatory. I just can't help enjoying some of the absurd accidents of translation.
I've only kept a mental list of these up until now, but I hope to try to document and update occasionally here with some photos if I remember.
Here's another site here which extensively documents these odd sorts of business names.
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