After seeing this, I’ll think twice before publishing anything I’ve translated with Babelfish. I think the ultimate lesson here is that the language barrier can be hard to overcome, and technology isn’t much help.

(Originally found here.)

For years, native English speakers have gotten a good chuckle out of the (increasingly rare) old chopsticks wrapper with poorly translated instructions. I, of course, am one of them.

But nothing about the chopsticks wrapper prepared me for the shockingly incomprehensible copy on this XBOX 360 headset package.

Credit where it’s due: I don’t own an XBOX 360, and I didn’t find this headset. It was posted on one of my favorite websites for hotheaded computer geeks such as myself, The Daily WTF. (I was glad to see that someone had also posted the Dell plastic bag safety warning hieroglyphics. I brought home one of these bags from work and have been meaning to scan it and make t-shirts. I suppose those images are copyrighted, but I wouldn’t want to own up to having created them!)

Now, before we get started, I just want to say, China has a rich cultural heritage and is full of intelligent, creative people. China had gunpowder when Europeans were still hitting each other over the heads with sticks. China had paper when the Greeks were still drawing geometric shapes in the sand… with sticks. But long after Europeans started eating with forks and knives, the Chinese were… well, still using sticks.

But I’m not even here to make fun of chopsticks. I like eating Chinese and Japanese food with chopsticks. It makes the experience more authentic, and it is humbling to see how incompetent I am with these, while someone like Daniel LaRusso can catch a fly with them.

Anyway, as I said, I like to try my “nice Chinese food with chopsticks.” I think you see where I’m going with this.

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