During my stint in the Oxfam office I did a fair bit of proofreading. The staff there do have pretty good English on the whole, but sometimes mistakes are made.

There was one document – the mapbook, which will be distributed to over 700 Trailwalker participants (many of whom are native English speakers), which I didn’t check.

My reaction, on reading through a copy of this document which has just returned from the printers, was a mixture of absolute horror and immense amusement.

In this mapbook, it talks in Japanese about not throwing rubbish away on the path – take it home with you.

Check out the English translation of the header!

One Response

  1. You have to tell people it’s intentional. If I knew someone Japanese had made a joke like that on purpose, I would be filled with respect for their mighty command of the English language (and British English, no less!).