Tuesday, 25 March 2014
Department of Misguided Business Names
Somewhere in Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry makes a reference to foreigners' love for punning in English. Although I can't put my finger on it now, I was extremely glad when I read it, as it proved that I am not the only person who has noticed this odd phenomenon. The impulse to pun leads non-native-English speakers into making decisions English speakers themselves would never make about business names. I've already posted about some of them. Here are a couple more, the first from Chinatown in Melbourne:
the second from Dubai - Labels or Love, what can it mean; is it a play on labour of love, I wonder - even if it is, it's still meaningless, surely:
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Since you posted about this kind of thing before, I fear I may have made this comment before (I hope not), but I remember hearing two Japanese product names from a former French teacher who did a lesson on this same idea. One was a brand of pants: "Slim Pecker Pants." (!?) The other was for a flavored soda: "Cal Pis."
ReplyDeleteTant pis that they didn't go for Lo-Cal - they might have enticed me, at a pinch, (or possibly not).
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