No. 208 FOLLOW

I had my vacation at Florida state
You spent your vacation at Florida State?フロリダ州立大学??

今週のよくある英語の間違い:

Co-host: Kei Oonuki

Someone’s doing my job for me!

PetBottle (photo by Tim Young)

X PetBottle

Tim says:

Is the bottle your pet? What can you feed a bottle, anyway?

This bottle collection point is at the high school where I teach, and as you can see, one of the students has already noticed the error! “PET” is the name of a type of plastic. Since the letters are initials (for “polyethylene terephthalate”), the letters should all be capitalized.

It’s not wrong to call it a “PET bottle”, I guess, but most Americans don’t know this term; it would seem very technical to us. We just call them “plastic bottles”.

O Plastic Bottles

周囲にある英語を見て、果たしてそれが正しい英語なのだろうかと感じる英語はありますか?「あの英語は絶対に間違っている」という英語の表記はありますか?看板の写真を撮って、Machigai.comに送りましょう!とんでもない英語だったら、このコーナーで出します!

Quiz No. 417

この文章を英語にしてください。(辞書を使ってはいけません!)

(買い物の時)それを頂きます。

次のクイズは3月25日(水)です。

This site will always respect your personal information.

Entering your e-mail address will allow this form to send a copy of your answer back to you.

このコーナーは毎週水曜日です!

No. 207 FOLD

今週のよくある英語の間違い:

Co-hosts: Haruka Murakami, Kana Horiuchi, and Kei Oonuki

Is this a construction company or a Pokemon?

We evolve for the 100th anniversary. (photo by Tim Young)

X We evolve for the 100th anniversary.

Tim says:

This sign raises a lot of questions about this construction company. What do they evolve into? What is it the 100th anniversary of? (Presumably, of this company, but it doesn’t say that!) Their evolution is happening only because of the anniversary — not for any other reason?

Unfortunately, when I took this photo I didn’t think to keep the Japanese from being partly blocked by the tree! But I think what they’re trying to say is what I’ve written below. Note that I’ve used “growing”, because they used 成長 in the Japanese part, and it sounds more positive than “evolve”; also, I made it “our 100th anniversary”, because you need to state whose anniversary it is!

O We are growing as we move toward our 100th anniversary.

 

周囲にある英語を見て、果たしてそれが正しい英語なのだろうかと感じる英語はありますか?「あの英語は絶対に間違っている」という英語の表記はありますか?看板の写真を撮って、Machigai.comに送りましょう!とんでもない英語だったら、このコーナーで出します!

Quiz No. 416

この文章を英語にしてください。(辞書を使ってはいけません!)

駅で、エスカレーターでホームまで降りた。

次のクイズは3月18日(水)です。

This site will always respect your personal information.

Entering your e-mail address will allow this form to send a copy of your answer back to you.

このコーナーは毎週水曜日です!

No. 206 GO BACK

今週のよくある英語の間違い:

Co-hosts: Haruka Murakami, Kana Horiuchi, and Kei Oonuki

Taking the Mickey out of this one

act well (photo by Tim Young)

X Believe and act well, then someday your dream will come true.

Tim says:

Act well? Do you mean, on a stage? In a movie?

Act has various meanings, but when I hear “act well”, I think it can only be referring to the meaning of what an actor does in a theater.

Fortunately, this is a case where we can see the original Japanese that was translated incorrectly. 「強く信じて行動すれば…」Certainly 「行動する」can be translated as “act”, but “well” is not a good translation of 「強く」.  Also, apparently “well” was meant to apply to “believe” as well as “act”, but that’s not clear without reading the Japanese, and in any case, “believe well” is also a bit strange.

A direct translation might be “If you strongly believe and strongly act…”, but it doesn’t sound natural. A sentence like this will have to be translated more loosely in order to sound natural. Here’s my attempt:

O Believe with all your might, do your best, and someday all your dreams will come true.

周囲にある英語を見て、果たしてそれが正しい英語なのだろうかと感じる英語はありますか?「あの英語は絶対に間違っている」という英語の表記はありますか?看板の写真を撮って、Machigai.comに送りましょう!とんでもない英語だったら、このコーナーで出します!

Quiz No. 415

この文章を英語にしてください。(辞書を使ってはいけません!)

警察が玄関に来ている。

次のクイズは3月11日(水)です。

This site will always respect your personal information.

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このコーナーは毎週水曜日です!

No. 205 IN THE BACK

今週のよくある英語の間違い:

Co-hosts: Kei Oonuki, Haruka Murakami, & Kana Horiuchi