Buying my favorite packaged-for-Europe rice cakes at my local MaxMart grocery store in Accra, I noticed someone had (very helpfully) stuck on a sticker translating the ingredients and the marketing hype.
"Ingredients: 98. % natural brown rice, sesame. Perhaps check the rice cakes, for example, for breakfast including, as a snack for in between, at home, traveling or at work. The recipes are as delicious as it manifolds: it tastes better with butter, honey, fruit spreads, curd, cheese, hearty cold cuts, delicious biozentrale spreads or as companion to all kinds of fruity yogurt."
It makes me laugh when I come across such examples of semi-mangled English. These even wittier for trying (and mostly succeeding) to sound upscale.
Sometimes things are simply funnier in translation.
"…check the rice cakes…" - Check them for what? Well, if it's my kitchen these days, for ants.
"…as a snack for in between…" - For in between?
"The recipes are as delicious as it manifolds…" - Gotta applaud the random use of "manifolds."
And I love the way "it tastes better with butter" rolls off the tongue.
I must admit that, after photographing the packaging just now, I had a rice cake with some fruity spreads.
Guess I'm a sucker for marketing hype. Maybe things are tastier in translation, too.
