Dunglish

Poor uninformed mayonnaise…! Usually, the Dutch ‘koel en donker bewaren’, a standard phrase on food products, is translated as ‘keep cool and out of sunlight’, ‘…direct light’, ‘store in a cool and dark place’, that sort of thing. However the poetic ‘in the dark’ although understandable means to purposely not inform someone of something, like some second-class spy being set up in a bad movie. The hyphen is wrong as is the ‘soyaprotein’.

Yes, we know what they are trying to say, but the Dunglish doesn’t even come close to the Dutch original. First, I want to address the language problem, then the big honking cultural problem.

The Dutch roughly says, ‘Do you do it like this at home, too?’ and then the message is lost in translation, never mind ‘your’ that got botched up (‘youre’).

The big honking issue here is the unfortunate ‘Dutch rudeness’. Pointing out bad behaviour in puppy-peed-on-the-carpet style gets you nowhere with the rest of us mortals. ‘Please pick up after yourself’. Thank you’ is the way to go, no matter how irritated you are. And then the Dunglish won’t matter as much.

(Thanks Arjen!)

SOS Piet is coming to fix this woman’s dish!

Not only does he do his best food-wise, he speaks Flemish (Dutch subtitles are provided for those who have problems with his accent), there are bits of Spanish, and he throws in some English and Flemglish as well, making a right funny dish of it himself.

Bon appetit!

(Tip: Scrubs Scrubman)

I’m shaking my head and saying ‘Oh my God’! A Dutch company came up with a sausage called Beat It to help stop hunger on the way home from work or after the gym. I have so many problems with this name:

It reminds me of Michael Jackson
It sound so rude! I mean, beating, sausage — OMG!
I can’t imagine an Anglo-Saxon company seriously putting a sausage on the market with this name.

And guess what? They have plans for a second sausage called B-Strong that will give you energy. That’s not as bad, but I’m not sure. B-Strong or Beat It!

Oh no, it’s Dunglish strawberry flavoured, frozen something or other. A whole campaign based on major clichés from American television shows like CSI and Cold Case, and then some British English thrown in, which I don’t get. It sounds terrible to me. Marketing low fat products to a young crowd and not to fat, lazy women is kind of innovative. And I’m told it tastes good, but it had to end up here.

(Photo: Branko)