Please Translate with Precision and Elegance: Uncovering Forgeries at the "Museum of Wonky English"

Something stinks at Duolingo's pop-up museum in Shibuya, and it isn't the immaculately clean urinal on the far wall.

The museum, which was created by Tokyo/Singapore creative Agency UltraSuperNew, opened on November 29 and closed Wednesday, December 7. Its exhibits consisted of minimalist installations of familiar objects: a coffeemaker, a pyramid of Jell-o cups, a fire escape door. (And, yes, a urinal.)

Each everyday scene was accompanied by some eyebrow-raising English. For example, the coffeemaker had a small placard that read, "When coffee is all gone. It's over." A pile of trash bags lay under a hand-lettered sign with the message: "Do not dumb here. Not dumb area here." And to tie everything into context, small signs in Duolingo's trademark green gave the literal meanings of the mistaken English and how each one should have been written.

The UltraSuperNew website explains that the museum concept is about appreciating these lovable, awkward translation mistakes that make us giggle and (just maybe) make us think. By exposing people to the amusing new phrases that can be born through mistranslation, they hope to encourage interest in language study.

But therein lies the problem. My problem, that is. Because among these bonafide mistranslations and mistakes, forgeries lurk. True, they are not the kinds of forgeries that could compel Sotheby's to issue a $10 million refund, and you could argue that they aren't hurting anyone. But that does not make them any less dishonest. Let me explain.

Although the musuem has already closed, I am still receiving messages from friends and family sending me links to the Youtube ad for the installation. One particular image is often used in the promotional material: a bathroom sign that reads, "Please urinate with precision and elegance."

Every time I see that image, I heave a deep sigh. Because it isn't a mistranslation; it's a farce.

As those who live in Japan know, the phrase being translated on that sign is very, very common. It's so ubiquitous that someone surveyed 40 bathrooms at stations along the Yamanote Line, looking for the presence of that sign.

Many of those signs have English. In most cases, the Japanese is translated literally or semi-literally as "Thank you for using clean," or "Please keep this bathroom clean."

"Thank you for using clean" (キレイまで使って頂いてありがとうございます) is already pretty wonky. Duolingo could have used that phrase in their installation. But they didn't. They wanted something more extreme.

Which brings me to the apocryphal translation.

There is simply no way someone could mistakenly produce "Please urinate with precision and elegance."

First, the elements of "urinate" and "precision" are not present in the Japanese. They have been conjured from thin air. And although some devil's advocates might argue that "elegance" was a translation of きれい ("clean"), they would be hard pressed to explain how an adverb in Japanese became a prepositional phrase in the translation.

"But don't translators often add, change, or remove elements in order to produce a good localization?" you ask. Yes, yes they do. Skilled professional translators do that all the time. Which would mean that whoever was hired for this job apparently had a juvenile sense of humor and very little oversight.

A "Museum of Nefarious English" would be a very interesting pop-up, but that is not what the Duolingo promotion attested to be. And more to the point, I don't think this is the work of a single, ill-intentioned translator.

I think this is a meme.

After all, there is another explanation for how such an outlandish English sentence might have first come into being: it's funny! Part of the mistranslation's appeal (and by extension, the museum's) is that it points to the extreme clash of cultures that exists between the East and West.

There's a Simpsons episode from 1999 that has the iconic yellow family vacationing in Japan. When they arrive at their hotel, Homer stows their baggage in the closet and walks to the bathroom, where the toilet greets him. "Welcome," it says in a soothing robot voice, "I am honored to accept your waste."

The combination of scatalogical humor and poking fun at Japan's conspicuous politeness is ripe for jokes, and I think this "mistranslation" is another example.

Looking closely at the original image (the header to this article), you may notice its oddness. It seems to be taped to the tile wall behind it, but it isn't laminated, which I have never seen in Japan. Also, the font seems off. Most posted notices in Japan are written in a gothic (ゴシック体) font, in which the width of the stroke never changes. However, this text is written in a Ming (明朝体) font.

I put the two fonts side-by-side for comparison. Do you see it?

By pure coincidence, the default Japanese font in Microsoft Word happens to be "Yuumeichou" (遊明朝), a Ming font. Prior to 2013, the default font was MS Ming, another Ming font. Incidentally, it is the same font I used to write all of my Japanese assignments during college. (Hmm.)

[Edit: Reader Peter Smith pointed out that the Japanese also conspicuously ends in a period, not a maru (--> 。) This is definitely suspicious.]

However, all of this evidence is circumstantial. Just because the sign seems like something created outside of Japan for a one-off joke à la The Simpsons, there's no real proof of that, right?

Well, no. There's no proof that someone created this "mistranslation" to make a joke at the expense of Japan. Nor is there proof that someone did the exact same thing for a joke at the expense of China. But it sure does seem that way. The exact same weird English sentence, created by two mistranslations of two totally different languages. What are the odds?

Once again, the actual meaning of the source language is quite different. The (simplified) Chinese here means something along the lines of "Close is convenient, close is cultured."

I wrote earlier that these forgeries don't harm anyone, but I'm not actually sure that's true. When Duolingo and UltraSuperNew teamed up to create the museum, they were trying to find humor in the real-world errors of people trying to navigate two very different languages. Unfortunately, what they displayed instead was someone's idea of a joke.

And what's worse is that they didn't just do it once.

There was a second exhibit at the Museum of Wonky English that makes me sigh: a sign on the door that said "PANIC CAREFULLY."

This exhibit was a reference to an image that has circulated on the web since sometime in 2013. It shows a red security door with a white sign on it. The paradoxical English is accompanied by the Japanese for "emergency ladder."

Once again, there is no reasonable leap that can be made from the source text to the "mistranslation." And once again, the image is very suspicious. The white sign does not seem to be shaded realistically; it is a little too uniform. No information is readily available about when or where the "photo" was "taken."

Even more oddly, the sign hangs on a door, despite the fact that emergency ladders are typically kept in boxes.

So, what's the point in dissecting all of this?

Any museum curator worth their salt will attest: you have to do your homework before you hang something on the wall. The other mistaken translations in the museum were all attached to known times and places. For example, the context of "When coffee is all gone. It's over." was well documented by the likes of SoraNews, and there are multiple photographs of it from different angles on Twitter.

The shirt bearing the words "CRAP YOUR HANDS" in bright rainbow font is a reference to an infamous mistranslation on the box of a "Rockin' Elmo" toy produced by Sanrio in the early 2000s. These toys are still on the secondary market, along with the sticker that was used to cover the error.

This due diligence is important. Duolingo is one of the most widely used language-learning services in the world, and the creation of this museum (and its associated merch, Youtube video, and countless web articles) will likely ensure that "Please urinate with elegance and precision" continues to be circulated on the web as "funny Japanese Engrish" for many years to come.

Mistakes are unavoidable and very, very common in the world of translation. This is doubly so when working with two linguistically disparate languages such as English and Japanese. Those mistakes can function as valuable opportunities for learning, but not if they're fake.

And after all, there are plenty of bona fide examples of hilarious mistranslations out there. Why not enjoy those?