Have you ever Lol'd at a service manual?

[prntrfxr]

yeah...I had one for an Epson inkjet that started:

"Assume the top cover is open..."

So I left the top cover open but couldn't make heads nor tails out of the rest of the paragraph. The words were English, but the sentences didn't make any sense. It took me half an hour to figure out the paragraph. Turns out the phrase above was to make sure the cover was closed. Go figure

[gwaddle]

My favorite line from a service manual wasn't on a copier, but a French helicopter. The same translation problem exsits. Anyway I was installing a replacement engine and when it came to connecting the engine to the gearbox, it didn't say that. What it said was to "offer up" the engine to the gear box. I felt like I was sacrificing a virgin.

[skynet]

Plug the crossover cable into the connector that becomes it next to the usb port

Its also funny when they leave letters out

Instructions for fitting the optional tray tits finisher S1

Presumably they meant 'to its'

[claudioterrible]

wich kind of sensor is this? we can make some kind of rings to detect "virgins" and sell a lot!!! 10 box each one ,what do you think?

[skynet]

I plan to, and I've only ever seen one full sized Toshiba, it wasn't plugged in, 'nuff said.

That's probably the best configuration.

[Shadow1]

Japlish and Spanglish are so common my brain has started to automatically translate, and I don't hardly notice anymore.

I've seen a few things that were much funnier just because they were translated perfectly, but had a totally different meaning than what I'm sure was intended:

Lanier used to say they wanted to be "The Premier high visibility, high contact vendor for all your office needs." Not only did it sound really bad in English, but they found it didn't translate into ANY language.

Sign in a Japanese hotel room read: "Please feel free to take advantage of the maid."

In Taiwan, the translation of the Pepsi slogan "Come alive with the Pepsi Generation" came out in Chinese as Pepsi will bring your ancestors back from the grave.

When Parker Pen marketed a ballpoint pen in Mexico, its ads were supposed to say It won’t leak in your pocket and embarrass you. However, the company mistakenly thought the Spanish word embarazar meant embarrass. Instead the ads said:It won’t leak in your pocket and make you pregnant.

Frank Perdue’s slogan It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken sounds much more interesting in Spanish. A photo of Perdue with one of his chickens appeared on billboards all over Mexico with a caption that explained:
It takes a hard man to make a chicken aroused (or)
It takes a sexually stimulated man to make a chicken affectionate.

Coors translated its slogan, Turn it loose, into Spanish, where it was read as Suffer from diarrhea.

Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer Electrolux used the following in an American campaign: Nothing sucks like an Electrolux.

When Braniff translated a slogan touting its upholstery, Fly in leather, it came out in Spanish as Fly naked.

The Microsoft ad slogan, as translated into Japanese: If you don’t know where you want to go, we’ll make sure you get taken. (Very appropriate, don't you think?)

Clairol introduced the Mist Stick, a curling iron, into German only to find out that Mist is slang for (to put it delicately) manure. Not too many people had use for the Manure
Stick. This is the reason why Rolls Royce decided not to call one of its models the Silver Mist - for fear of lost sales in the German-speaking world.

When Chevrolet developed the Chevy Nova, they decided to market it heavily in Mexico, where the name translates as doesn’t go. The car was later renamed Caribe.

Ford had a similar problem in Brazil when the Pinto flopped. The company found out that Pinto was Brazilian slang for tiny male genitals. Ford pried all the nameplates off and substituted Corcel, which means horse.

The name Coca-Cola in China was first rendered as something that when pronounced sounded like Coca-Cola: Ke-kou-ke-la. Unfortunately, the Coke company did not discover until after thousands of signs had been printed that the characters used meant bite the wax tadpole or female horse stuffed with wax, depending on the dialect. Coke then researched 40,000 Chinese characters and found a close phonetic equivalent, Ko-kou-ko-le, which can be loosely translated as happiness in the mouth.

The Kentucky Fried Chicken slogan finger-lickin’ good came out in KFC’s first Chinese campaign as eat your fingers off.

An American tee-shirt maker in Miami printed shirts for the Spanish market, promoting the Pope’s visit. Instead of the desired I saw the Pope! (el Papa) Thousands of shirts proudly proclaimed in Spanish I saw the Potato! (la Papa).

Hunt-Wesson introduced its Big John products in French Canada as Gros Jos before finding out that the phrase, in slang, means big breasts. But in this case, the name problem did not seem to have a negative effect on sales.

Colgate introduced a toothpaste in France called Cue, the name of a notorious porn magazine. We know sex sells, but that might have been going a bit too far. Even for France, famous for having a more liberal attitude towards sex, nude pictures in advertising, etc.

In Italy, a campaign for Schweppes Tonic Water translated the name into Schweppes Toilet Water.

When Gerber started selling baby food in Africa, they used the same packaging as in the US, with the beautiful baby on the label. Later they learned that in Africa, companies routinely put pictures on the label of what’s inside, since many people can’t read English.

[jonezy999]

Didn't really make me laugh, but the toshiba e-2500/3500c manual is bloody hopeless. I think the code is CA00 and the troubleshooting for this code has around 25 steps, turn off IQC, turn this and that on,ra ra ra, step 25 do test copies, how do they look? Good? Bad? Proceed to step 5. Viscous circle. Long story short, if ya ever get this code, just turn off image quality control and use ya eyes. Forget steps 3-25.

[copyruss]

I believe it was the Mita 8585 and the manual was refering to the "total counter" and the misprint was "total cunter". Figured they knew my ex-wife...

[blackcat4866]

Anyone ever try to perform the image registration adjustment as written in the Cougar, Tiger or Jupiter manual? It's 6 pages of totally incomprehensible gibberish. After 4 years experience on Sharp, I had thought that I must be just dense. How could a registration adjustment be that hard?

Even followed to the letter it just doesn't work. =^..^=

[Akitu]

I tried it once and came to the same conclusion... Do only what you have to from that, and nothing more.