Garden gaming

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Reader GL was amused by this label on a package of garden stakes:

(Click on the image for a more complete picture of the package.)

As GL explains,

Enjeux, of course, means "stakes", but only for the stakes in a bet or a risky undertaking. Oddly, the rest of the translations on the label are correct, including tuteurs for stakes in the smaller print.

It would have been poetic justice if the English version of the smaller print had specified

4 ft. – 25 guardians

instead of

4 ft. – 25 stakes



10 Comments

  1. Gary said,

    September 3, 2011 @ 6:07 pm

    Where's the joke? Tuteur means prop, support, garden satke in French.

  2. Gary said,

    September 3, 2011 @ 6:21 pm

    Sorry–should have read more carefully.

  3. phosphorious said,

    September 3, 2011 @ 6:57 pm

    "Place your beets"

    [(myl) "Mesdames et messieurs, les choux sont faits."]

  4. contrebassiste said,

    September 5, 2011 @ 2:19 am

    "and how would you like your stake, Joan?", as a soldier in Rouen's square famously asked

  5. Private Zydeco said,

    September 6, 2011 @ 11:10 pm

    Wiktionary gives this gloss for "Tuteur" in English:

    Noun
    tuteur (plural tuteurs)

    1.A four-sided pyramid- or obelisk-like trellis designed to help train climbing plants.

    [(myl) That entry seems far too particular. The Oxford-Hachette French dictionary gives just plain "stake, support".]

  6. George said,

    September 8, 2011 @ 10:45 am

    What strikes me as odd is why 'enjeux' is in the plural in the large print part of the label while 'stake' is in the singular. If they were working from the English text, they would have had 'enjeu'. The small print makes it clear that there are 25 stakes but the small print was obviously translated separately, as the French is correct (except for a bit of uncertainty around the verbs, which are in the singular, despite the plural adjectives in the first line). Weird.

  7. LC said,

    September 8, 2011 @ 4:16 pm

    I still don't get the guardians joke.

  8. LC said,

    September 8, 2011 @ 4:18 pm

    Never mind. My brain was on "fried".

  9. contrebassiste said,

    September 8, 2011 @ 5:50 pm

    Just in case anyone is wondering, the "guardian" joke is based on the main and oldest French sense of "tuteur" (from at least 13th Century) – defender, protector or guardian. Its use as a gardening term dates from the beginning of the 18th Century.

  10. Andy said,

    September 20, 2011 @ 10:21 am

    I liked "Use when staking plants" because I get the image of a vampire plant…

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