Lucy Vickery

Lost in translation | 18 May 2017

issue 20 May 2017

In Competition No. 2998 you were invited to submit a set of instructions for an everyday device that have been badly translated into English.
 
Poorly translated menus are more or less guaranteed to raise a holiday snigger (albeit tinged with a guilty awareness of one’s own linguistic shortcomings), but the challenge here was to amuse while staying the right side of intelligible. This you managed with varying degrees of success.
 
On the whole, though, your entries were well-judged: funny, charming, poignant even. Commendations go to Max Ross and Brian Murdoch. And to P.C. Parrish, who managed to make piercing film lids sound almost exciting: ‘For tiptop consummation, finger choice dish, remove her outer garment while retaining cuffs, place on kinky table, and perforate to let off steam, twisting knob for aspirational timespan.’
 
The bonus fiver is Adrian Fry’s. His fellow winners take £35.
 






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