Back in November, I discussed what happened when Tom Cruise used machine translation to connect to his Indians fans. Since I am in Japan, I come across bad English translations on a daily basis. I hadn’t posted any on Linguistrix because Chinglish/Janglish is very common stuff and you get them dime by the dozen. But today I found this one that is incomprehensible in at least two languages (I have to check up my Chinese friend to find out whether it makes any more sense in Chinese than it does in English/Hindi. Edit: It is bad too). This was put up outside the cafeteria in NIMS. It is also interesting that whoever put up the notice thought of putting a Hindi translation too. There are very few Indian employees in NIMS, and the ones that are there would know English well (though it’s a different matter that even the English one makes little sense).
The Japanese version is basically informing readers that their (lunch) Prepaid Cards have been cancelled until the end of March. The machine translated English and Hindi are of course mangled beyond recognition. The last part कृपया समझो! could as well have been a plea to the reader to figure out what has been written. It is funny for two reasons—notices such as these are usually written with the _aap_ verb forms (कृपया समझिए), and even if they aren’t, it is very rare to see the _tum_ form of the verb with kripaya. You will find notices with the _tum_ form of the verb, such as ‘कंडोम का इस्तेमाल करो!’, but it is a rare sign (if at all) that would use this verb form with kripaya.