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What does this phrase mean?

What does his phrase on my bag mean?

  • I live in northern Uganda. I bought a http://imgur.com/dFHCh7k at the market that has this phrase on the back: "Fashionadle lie fallow mountaineer wrap sport SPORT". I've seen many of these bags with the same phrase in many different towns. I would like to know whose job it was to decide what gets printed on the bag, and how they ended up with that phrase. I'm not intending to find the specific person who made this (though that would be amazing). Rather, in the business of mass producing cheap bags for export to Uganda/Africa, whose job would it have been to decide what gets written on the bag? Then, when that person comes to choose a phrase to go on this new line of bags, how did they end up with 'Fashionadle lie fallow mountaineer wrap sport SPORT'? Could they have started with a phrase and used a thesaurus to disastrous effect? What was that initial phrase? I just can't imagine the starting point that would lead to this result. I am aware that this is a shot in the dark and the best I can hope for is probably just various levels of educated guesses, but I'd love to find out what I can. Thanks in advance!

  • Answer:

    My guess would be a Chinese designer using automatic translation to disastrous/hilarious effect. See Victor Mair's posts at http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/ for many, many examples.

twirlypen at Ask.Metafilter.Com Visit the source

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Also from http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3910, it looks like "lie fallow" is a common mis-translation when the original word is "leisure".

ellenaim

Wild guess at the initial phrase / intended meaning: fashionable off-season mountaineer bundle, extra sporty?

Monsieur Caution

I think you're right, col_pogo, but I'm trying to find out what that designed put into the translator to get that output. Can the process be reversed?

twirlypen

bq

I'm guessing "Fashionadle" is a typo for "fashionable."

Johnny Wallflower

"Wrap" in Chinese is the same word as "bag" or "pack."

zjacreman

"Fashionable leisure mountaneer sport bag" almost makes sense. I wonder if "mountaneer" has other Chinese meanings.

Johnny Wallflower

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