The opposite of Engrish: meanings behind beloved brands

The reason we all enjoy Engrish so much is because we know that someone somewhere probably meant to say something deep and meaningful. That is, until someone who wanted to relay the message had a horrible accident while attempting to climb the dreaded and evil language barrier. The horrific result of said accident of course, amuses all of us to no end.

But what’s the opposite of Engrish? Well, English is the sad result of trying to sound meaningful in a foreign language. What if we’ve got something that sounds meaningless but ends up as something that is far from sad, something that’s cherished and rallied towards by hoards of loyal fans. Something like say, Japanese gaming company names.

Capcom, Nintendo, Sega, Namco, etc, we folks from the West barely know the meanings behind these names yet we think they’re cool, we rally to them, and use them as a means of making purchasing decisions. JC Barnett has an article up on his blog entitled Japanmanship, about those unknown meanings.

For example, did you know that the Japanese stock-market listing of Nintendo – “nin” (charge, responsibility), “ten” (Heaven, sky) and “do-” (temple, shrine or magnificent) – can be loosely translated as “leave luck to the heavens”? Also, did you know that Sega’s name is shortening of “Service Games“? Of course, service games make some of the pervs among us here at QJ chuckle.

Other enlightening and interesting translations are to be had via our read-link below.

The reason we all enjoy Engrish so much is because we know that someone somewhere probably meant to say something deep and meaningful. That is, until someone who wanted to relay the message had a horrible accident while attempting to climb the dreaded and evil language barrier. The horrific result of said accident of course, amuses all of us to no end.

But what’s the opposite of Engrish? Well, English is the sad result of trying to sound meaningful in a foreign language. What if we’ve got something that sounds meaningless but ends up as something that is far from sad, something that’s cherished and rallied towards by hoards of loyal fans. Something like say, Japanese gaming company names.

Capcom, Nintendo, Sega, Namco, etc, we folks from the West barely know the meanings behind these names yet we think they’re cool, we rally to them, and use them as a means of making purchasing decisions. JC Barnett has an article up on his blog entitled Japanmanship, about those unknown meanings.

For example, did you know that the Japanese stock-market listing of Nintendo – “nin” (charge, responsibility), “ten” (Heaven, sky) and “do-” (temple, shrine or magnificent) – can be loosely translated as “leave luck to the heavens”? Also, did you know that Sega’s name is shortening of “Service Games“? Of course, service games make some of the pervs among us here at QJ chuckle.

Other enlightening and interesting translations are to be had via our read-link below.