Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Do Not Want


You gotta love bad Engrish translations. ‘Engrish’ is loosely defined as the humorous mistakes that come from translating Chinese or Japanese into English.

Previously I blogged about the AYBABTU meme which developed because of the strange translation of Japanese text into English.

DO NOT WANT is also a meme that developed from a strange translation:

A pirated version of Star Wars Episode III appeared for sale in the US soon after the movie release. This version had subtitles that had been translated into Chinese and then back into English – with some strange results.


Even the opening credits, where the English words appear on the screen have been mistranslated.
(The backstroke of the West?)









But the scene that started the meme appears right at the end of the movie when Darth Vader screams “NOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

Darth Vader’s cry appears in subtitles as “Do Not Want”.





And the rest is history.


The phrase has been used to create hundreds of Image Macros (many feature LOLcats, but the meme is certainly not limited to pictures of cats).

1 comment:

Tamara said...

Mwahahaha! I always get a smile out of yuor posts.