Monday, December 12, 2011

Tom Puts Jerry Balgarorp and Viewed With Cynicism

Ok, so it’s not like many kids’ coloring books are shining examples of good grammar and proper spelling, and following a story line or otherwise making any sense page to page is also a rare occurrence(!), but some books are truly humorous in their collection of errors. Throw in a foreign language and things get even more fun. Honor filled up a sticker chart in class and won a prize from the prize bin. She chose a cute little Tom & Jerry coloring book… and we found that the English translations of the Arabic text were hilarious! It was as if this book was made in China by a printer who knew neither language!

DSC01939

and

DSC01939

and my favorite:

DSC01938

Again, I don’t expect big things from coloring books, and I think it incredibly nice that the teacher provides these little incentives/gifts, probably little things she has to pay for out of pocket, so I wouldn’t want her to take a lot from her salary to do this. I’m not complaining about the gift at all!  Honor picked it for the coloring, not the reading… But these are funny!

A few more (no photos)

“Tom plays tennis with Jerry reel.”  (almost right! Almost matching the Arabic. Why the random ‘reel’??)

“Tom Jerry slap blow” (Arabic – Jerry hits Tom hard)

“Tom Jerry knows to be quiet” (Tom tells Jerry that we will be quiet)

“Tom and Jerry in violent battle” (They got this one right – the only one!)

“Tom and Jerry ithian for battle (Tom and Jerry prepare for battle)

2 comments:

JR said...

Cute stuff...love the Kid Wisdom list !
--JR

betty-NZ said...

That's so funny! I love it when translations don't quite match!