The Mysterious Case of the Spare Prick

A few weeks ago, I noticed an odd translation for the lock-equipped luggage racks aboard Japan Railway's new Narita Express trains: 

When the set combination is forgotten, it becomes a delivery of the spare prick in the train terminal station.

What the hell? The Japanese is straightforward enough:

指定された暗証番号をお忘れの場合は、列車終着駅でお荷物の引渡しとなります。

Which gives us, normally,

If you forget your combination, your luggage will be returned to you at the final stop.

So whither the "prick"?

After doing some poking around (huh, huh) online, I realized that the N'Ex is just one victim -- there seem to be other examples throughout Japan. And I think I've managed to discover the culprit. It appears to be none other than Excite Japan! Try giving the above sentences a whirl through Excite Japan's online translation service. Hell, just send お荷物 (luggage) through:

 

So there we have it. Intriguingly, Excite Japan's translation tool (huh, huh) is apparently powered by a company called BizLingo, sold by Accela Technology for the low, low monthly licensing fee of 119,000 yen per CPU (additional CPUs just 69,000 yen each, with a 250,000 yen setup fee.) Who knows what kind of deal they've cut with an online provider like Excite, but whatever the case, this particular system seems to be responsible for a rash of spare pricks across Japan.

But why "spare prick?" It is so far beyond the ken of the usual bad machine translation that its appearance has shocked even normally oblivious-to-Engrish native Japanese speakers. This blog theorizes that it may be an extrapolation from やっかい者, someone who is a "burden" to have around. やっかい者 also happens to be the translation of a British idiom I'd never heard before, "like a spare prick at a wedding," thus giving us a connection, however convoluted, to the spare pricks aboard the Narita Express.

Now you know. And knowing is half the battle, when it comes to extra genitalia.

Comments

[Steve Harrison]

Given that there are so MANY loaner words and phrases from Dutch, German, French, Portuguese, Russian, not to mention Chinese, Korean, other Pac Rim nations, and of course English (American and British), I can't help but think this has a more obvious yet obscure root.

You'd never believe how long I sweated over 'Entotsu'(smokestack), trying to understand why that part of the Yamato wasn't just called a 'smokestack'...after all, the rocket Anchor wasn't called some odd Dutch word for anchor....

Let alone the famous 'Landsell' school backpack book bag.

Maybe I'll just ask Zero Loyal Retainer next time I see him... :)

[MattAlt]

I'm not sure I get you. What is obscure about "entotsu"? It's literally 煙突 -- "smoke" plus "something that projects," which gives you "chimney." I don't think it's a loanword.

[Steve Harrison]

It's my understanding it has its roots in I think it was Dutch, as Entos. Gaa, so long ago. I got the impression when I was looking things up that the concept of the smokestack, the chimney, was an import. Or maybe that's a memory from a DIFFERENT EARTH!

[Johannes Wilhelm]

It is really sad to see that human translators' work is so much underrated. In the end and in many cases i guess these "real" translators' fees would be much cheaper than changing all those faulty signs in Japanese (and even more in Chinese!) public.

[thomas]

I'm afraid that I have to disappoint you, Steve. The common Dutch word for "anchor" is "anker". As for "Entos", I've never heard of the word, and it isn't listed in my "Dikke van Dale" (a big Dutch dicitionary). So either it's very archaic, or you are mixing up languages. You're sure you aren't making the rather common mistake by English speakers of mixing up "Dutch" and "Deutsch" (german for "German")?

[Steve Harrison]

Thomas, it's very possible. It may also be Portuguese.

Might have been 'Entots.

And it may indeed be archaic. Remember, we're talking like the 1800's or thereabouts.

Naturally it was something I had looked up like back in '82 so WHERE I found it is long, long gone missing. Bah.

Doesn't take away from the idea that 'spare prick' MUST be of the same ilk, the translation software being keyed to something painfully obscure in today's world. hell, maybe even taken from a REALLY OLD translation dictionary.

Don't tell me that doesn't happen. I know it does. :)

[Steve Harrison]

I wonder if I have a partial answer.

I'm looking at an old conversational dictionary, and 'luggage' is listed as 'tenimotsu' or simply 'Nimotsu.

手荷物

I'll just show my ignorance and say what I see what you have written, and how the message is written above is 'O-nimotsu', yes?

What happens if you plug Tenimotsu into that translator? I'm wondering if the 'rules' it was written under expects the (I assume dis-used) Tenimotsu and so...

[Big Ben]

I can explain!

Many years ago I used to work as a programmer/linguist on the ATLAS translation engine, which powers BizLingo/excite. When faced with the need to drastically increase the number of words in our dictionary (for marketing reasons) we purchased the Eijiro dictionary data, notoriously uneven in its quality, and added it to our engine without editing or quality control.

I then spent months trying to find and purge all the random sexual slang translations for otherwise innocuous words, but I knew that hundreds would get through no matter how hard I tried. (That job was good for quite a few laughs, as you might imagine.)

In this case, お荷物＝luggage or baggage, but also slang for the guy you wish wasn't around, but that you're obliged to bring along. So it actually is kind of equivalent to the British slang "spare prick".

At my current job, the same Eijiro dictionary was responsible for the phrase "nut chokers" appearing in an equity report.

It's hilarious to see this come up all these years later.