Spectator competition winners: The joy of bad translations (‘For tiptop consummation, finger choice dish and place on kinky table…’)

The request for a set of instructions for an everyday device that have been badly translated into English was prompted by the appearance in my Twitter feed of some oft retweeted instructions for a PVC mobile phone case. It was, the buyer was told, a device of ‘easy schleping and more function’ which ‘can be hunged up at the waist, hunged up at the cervix and free holding’ There are easy laughs to be had at the expense of poorly translated holiday menus, etc (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. Hats off 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.