Triumph of bilingual labelling
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I can tell I'm a little tired because this Candian bilingual label is completely hilarious. pic.twitter.com/u6248rtn0C
— Jen (@NHLhistorygirl) December 2, 2014
[h/t Jonathan Lundell]
Jon Lennox said,
December 2, 2014 @ 11:50 am
I'm inclined to wonder whether they originally came up with the name in French, and then translated it into English. It's actually a pun in French, whereas the English is a bit pedestrian.
Paul Clapham said,
December 2, 2014 @ 11:58 am
That's quite possible. In my experience the English marketing stuff like that is usually translated into something completely lame in French.
It's also possible that they spent a little bit of money to get a better French translation than the normal product.
Coby Lubliner said,
December 2, 2014 @ 12:32 pm
French Canadians seem to be good at it. Their slogan for McDonald's is "c’est ça que j’m", by far the cleverest version of the original "ich liebe es"; the almost universal English "I'm lovin' it" is pretty lame in comparison.
Keith said,
December 2, 2014 @ 12:54 pm
I heard Stromae in my head when I read "fromidable".
Gregory Kusnick said,
December 2, 2014 @ 1:09 pm
Here is an example from the opposite extreme. (Zoom the image for a better view.)
The packagers of a box of mâche salad greens have helpfully provided pronunciation advice ("sounds like 'Mosh'") on the English side of the label. And that advice has been helpfully translated into French on the other side of the label, presumably to inform French speakers that the French word "mâche" should be pronounced to sound like the English word "mosh".
Matthew McIrvin said,
December 2, 2014 @ 1:14 pm
That's as good as translating Astérix's little dog Idéfix as "Dogmatix."
Coby Lubliner said,
December 2, 2014 @ 1:15 pm
It's the NAFTA thing — providing bad French and Spanish translations on American labels. At least they didn't translate "preservatives" as préservatifs<i?.
Matthew McIrvin said,
December 2, 2014 @ 1:15 pm
(…Wikipedia reminds me he actually belongs to Obélix; my mistake.)
Coby Lubliner said,
December 2, 2014 @ 1:16 pm
That ? was meant to be >.
Jerry Friedman said,
December 2, 2014 @ 2:49 pm
For NAFTA we need a Spanish version. ¡quesoave!
[(myl) You win the thread, no question.]
Anna said,
December 2, 2014 @ 3:21 pm
I love when they try to save space: "Non Gluten Free" with "Gluten" in big letters.
Fernando Colina said,
December 2, 2014 @ 5:00 pm
@Jerry Friedman, so for the last 4 hours I have been trying to come up with a Spanish equivalent. You win.
Peter Taylor said,
December 2, 2014 @ 5:22 pm
@Jerry Friedman and @Fernando Colina, exquesito.
Adrian Morgan said,
December 2, 2014 @ 7:22 pm
Can we have an explanation? Otherwise we'll all have nightmares about being attacked by formidable cheese.
Ethan said,
December 2, 2014 @ 7:28 pm
The English could have gone with "incurdable!"
Matt said,
December 2, 2014 @ 7:54 pm
Wait, what's clever about "c'est ça que j'm"? I thought it was just a normal SMS-y sentence. (Is the "m" taken as a reference to [M]cDonalds or something?)
LisaRR said,
December 2, 2014 @ 7:54 pm
Canada does have two official languages – so bilingual labelling definitely pre-dated NAFTA.
This product is from the grocery giant Loblaws. They have a few items with more interesting bilingual names like this in their yellow-label basic line but I can't recall any others right now …
EP said,
December 2, 2014 @ 8:21 pm
I was lucky enough to be in a forum where someone posted an even better French pun-slation.
EP said,
December 2, 2014 @ 8:22 pm
Annnnnd the link failed to work:
http://i.imgur.com/G5TBgYR.jpg
Chris C. said,
December 2, 2014 @ 9:08 pm
@Adrian — The French is a pun on "formidable!" which doesn't mean what it looks like it means in English. In French it means something like "wonderful!" or "excellent!", or the slang American sense of "awesome!" They've crossed it with the French word for cheese, "fromage", to come up with "fromidable!" As a pun, it's… well, formidable.
David L. Gold said,
December 2, 2014 @ 9:55 pm
Matt asks, "What's clever about 'c'est ça que j'm.'"
The answer becomes clearer when the correct spelling is seen:
C'est ça que j'M
That is, with a capital at the end.
We have, here, therefore, a shortening of "j'aime" and the "M" shaped in such a way (with curved rather than straight lines) that it resembles McDonald's arches.
If you google C'est ça que j'M, you should be able to find, maybe with a little hunting around, the slogan as it appears in French. I cannot reproduce an "M" with curved lines here.
champacs said,
December 3, 2014 @ 2:23 am
@Gregory Kusnick
which is stupid isn't it, because of course
(1) the French pronounce 'mâche' as 'mash' and not 'mosh'
(2) 'moche' (pronounced 'mosh') means ugly
DMT said,
December 3, 2014 @ 3:22 am
@champacs: By noticing that the packaging is meant for sale in North America, you can make the appropriate deductions about the intended phonetic value of the vowel in "mosh". But which variety of English pronounces "mash" like Fr. "mâche"?
Keith said,
December 3, 2014 @ 3:27 am
@champacs
Except that for many in the US, the o sound really resembles something similar to the way that they think the French a and especially â should be pronounced. You put the word "Jacques" in front of a few Americans and ask them to read it out loud and I think you'll find many of them using an ɑː sound, rather than an æ sound (look for "cot" "caught" merger for a similar thing).
But the whole idea of selling this salad green as "mâche" is a barbarism anyway. The perfectly accepted name "lamb's lettuce" has been abandoned in the US in preference for a borrowing from French.
Eli Nelson said,
December 3, 2014 @ 4:54 am
@DMT: many varieties of French (not in Quebec however) have merged the pronunciation of â and a as /a/, and consequently lack
/ɑ/. To my ears, the merged value is closer to the English vowel conventionally transcribed as /æ/ than to the English /ɑ/.
RP said,
December 3, 2014 @ 4:55 am
I remember reading that the traditional French distinction between the two "a" sounds has largely fallen by the wayside. In fact, according to one website: 'a handful of French speakers pronounce the words patte ("paw") and pâte ("paste") differently (but most speakers in France pronounce them identically)' ( http://www.french-linguistics.co.uk/pronunciation/french_a_vowel.shtml ).
The same site says the French "a" should be pronounced as in "cat" (which is the "mash" vowel) – which is certainly the English vowel that French "a" usually more closely resembles to my ear.
Adrian said,
December 3, 2014 @ 6:39 am
@DMT Here in the north of England, French mâche and English mash are very alike.
JJM said,
December 3, 2014 @ 10:23 am
I seem to recall some product here in Canada (a frozen dessert?) a while back that had the chippy slogan "A treat that can't be beat!" / "C'est un régal sans égal!"
mollymooly said,
December 4, 2014 @ 7:29 am
I think my mishmash comment above was meant for the previous blogpost's mash-mâche thread rather than this post's Wang-Wong thread.
Ginger Yellow said,
December 4, 2014 @ 8:37 am
So what exactly is the product? Some kind of cheese… drink?
[(myl) From the picture, it appears to be some sort of gooey orange cheese spread, along the lines of Cheese Whiz.]
Brett said,
December 4, 2014 @ 9:58 am
@mollymooly: Very meta. Nice.
Noscitur a sociis said,
December 6, 2014 @ 2:33 am
"We have, here, therefore, a shortening of "j'aime" and the "M" shaped in such a way (with curved rather than straight lines) that it resembles McDonald's arches."
The google images results all seem to have it written out in a regular typeface (including a small m) under the McDonald's logo. (Somewhat) interestingly, it appears that the same slogan is used in France, but with "j'aime" spelled out.
David L. Gold said,
December 6, 2014 @ 4:59 pm
A reply to "Noscitur a sociis said":
You have found rewritings of the slogan in ordinary typefaces. The actual sign with the logo may be seen at:
1. "J'M the McDonalds slogan "I'm Lovin' It" (www.sylvestremarketing.com/blog/jm-the-mcdonalds-slogan-im-lovin-it/).
2. The cover of Margaret Papillon's book J'M / La raison des plus forts… / L'affaire McDonald's (published in 2002). It was she who thought up the logo (in 1980).
3. "Images for C'est ça que j'M" (the second image from the left). I cannot find an address for this website. It came up when I googled "c'est ça que J'M."
Here are two more elements of the slogan " C'est ça que J'M"" worthy of comment:
1. The French name of the letter m is emme, which is homophonous with the word aime (the first-person present-tense singular indicative form of the verb meaning 'love').
2. McDonald's calls the arches "the Golden Arches" and therefore paints them yellow. At least the last part of the slogan, J'M are in yellow. Thus, a second allusion, besides the curved M, to the arches.