Guys Upstairs - Asia

When visiting a foreign country or even a local Chinese supermarket, you always see products and signs with bad English translations.  Is translating really that hard?

It is obvious to anyone that can read English that the sign above is incorrectly written.  Couldn’t the company have someone proofread this sign?  How difficult could this possibly be?  You could ask a teacher who teaches English or a native English speaker to correct these problems.  You could even look up the correct wording on the Internet.  There are thousands of ways to prevent these mistakes before signs like these are plastered on a wall.

Now, would anyone like a sack of dry nuts full of semen?  It’s only 89 cents.  Yea, I didn’t think so.  Don’t the companies that produce these products do market testing?  People are going to be deterred from buying a product with “semen” in its name.  Semen Sterculiae are actually Sterculia seeds.  They are produced in countries like Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, India, China, etc.   It is used as a herbal medicine to treat mainly sore throats and coughing.  It is occasionally used to treat constipation and headache.

Although it is often enjoyable to see these mistakes, let’s hope this will no longer be a problem in the future.