Wyn Drabble: It's Engrish magic, to be specific

The fact that I haven't written about Engrish for a long time does not mean that I have lost interest in this wonderful linguistic curiosity. Nor does it mean that you have stopped sending me good material.

Within the past few weeks, for example, I have gratefully received by mail a Wonder Home Magic Specific. I am not kidding when I say that this is the first time in my entire life that I have owned my very own Wonder Home Magic Specific.

What is it? Well, according to the pack - I haven't tried the product itself yet - it is "for all house hold cleaning! Do without detergent All grease wiped up." It claims, for instance, to do "glass windows" and if I were a wearer of make-up I could use it as a "make-up blotter". Apparently it's also perfect for the "gas table" but I don't think we have one of those.

But, as you would expect, it is the instructions on the back of the pack which interest me most. My computer will try to "fix" some of the spacing and punctuation but I will doggedly change it back because who am I to let technology go meddling with a Wonder Home Magic Specific?

"As towel for removing soil, Magic cleaner, is made of special textile without any medicine. It has stronger capability of absorbing water, longer duration for usage and cheaper price than the other related products."

When I eventually open the pack, I will simply "wet the magic cleaner towel. Then wipe the soiled area with it. After using it, without any rubbing or scrubbing, just put the soiled towel under faucet water for a few minutes, it will refresh to its original form."

Naturally, such a wonderful product comes with a caution: you can't be too careful, you know. "Clean the soiled towel as soon as possible. If there is some soiled material on the towel, please leave it to soapsuds at least 8 hours.and it will recover to fresh as before."

I have also received the wording from a product for cleaning of a more personal nature: "Yi YU invites you to have a feeling bath making you comfortable and refreshing. The specially designed towel accelerates blood circulation, cleanses skin and is a best partner of soap or lighly soap. No need to scrud, just lightly rud to make you comfortable."

As you can imagine, I am now on the lookout for some lighly soap.

Someone else has alerted me to one of the best time-wasters I have experienced in years. It's an online Engrish generator - you type in your English and it transrates it into perfect Engrish for you. Here is a simple but fairly lame example I typed in to test it. I'm sure it's enough to show you the potential of this facility.

I typed in my previous sentence and my transration was: "I being sufficient that shows the latent characteristic of this equipment verify thing." It's hard to argue with that!

But I think the Engrish prize this week has to go to this last product. Let's play a little game: I'll give you the product name and description and, by the end of reading it, you have to have worked out what it actually is.

Car's Oxygen Bar

This product produces the ozone and anoin can rapidly eliminate the car inside'ssoot, peculiar smell, and have force sterilization, the purification air, make the car as like bathes in the forest.

The anoin is called "in the air of Vitamin", is beneficial to the human's health. A) Purification blood improves the breath skill. B) Promotion metabolism. C) The adjustment internal secretion, relaxes the strain mood. D) Elimination positive charge to body's (ex: trachea, bronchial tube) stimulating.

Has the best medicine function and can effectively reduces the cough, sneezes, asthma's incidence of a disease.

Did you work it out? Of course you did. It's a car air freshener/purifier which plugs into the lighter socket (called the "smoke mouth" in the instructions).

If you worked it out you are the lucky winner of a Wonder Home Magic Specific.

If you didn't work it out, I'm afraid you are going to have to scrud up on your Engrish.

Wyn Drabble is a teacher of English, a writer, public speaker and musician.