Born To Fist T-shirt (like Engrish on T-shirts) 17Jul07
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This Belgium design company sehubabe.com clearly takes the clenched fist as a sign of defiance, revolution, and solidarity. Unfortunately the resulting T-shirt is one that you would have to think twice about wearing.

born to fist

born to fist guy

i would love to hear about any other t-shirts that failed to translate, if i get enough i’ll consolidate them into a post in the future, giving full credit to any contributers.

Thanks,

Karl

Filed under T-Shirts |
  • http://flickr.com/photos/citrusfreak12/ Andrew

    Y’know, I’m not so sure that it was an accident. Given some of the other tshirts on their site, I think they know what they’re saying.

  • http://n/a Vincent

    In the UK we recently had a gaffe by one of the biggest menswear retailers, Burton (not connected to the snowboard company).

    They commisioned a t-shirt with russian writing on it, I guess for sylistic purposes, which they were told said “be proud of russia”.

    Pity they didn’t research it properly as it turned out it said “cleanse Russia of all non-Russians”… a slogan used by some Russian neo-nazi groups. Oops!

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2078170,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront

  • http://www.frizzifrizzi.it Simone

    I agree. I think it’s voluntary.

  • Hunter

    Probably my favorite t-shirt slogan that didn’t quite make it through translation is this gem from Engrish.com:
    http://www.engrish.com/detail.php?imagename=Hate.jpg

  • Nick

    My little Karl, you sure haven’t understood the underlying Belgian humor… Wait a second, do you even know where Belgium is?

  • http://tcritic.com karl

    Haha Nick, I’ve been to Belgium twice and you guys are the worst drivers in the world :-) Each time I went to Belgium I wasn’t five minutes over the border when we were hit by another car. But you’re right, I don’t get this shirt, and i also live in San Francisco where a shirt like this could get you in a lot of trouble :-)

  • http://seasonedgamers.com Jaleeb Caru

    Depends what you mean by trouble, not that there’s anything wrong with that, unless it involves me.

    I may have mentioned this in another reply to one of your poor English translation t’s, but John Oats (of the famed Hall and Oats) used to collect shirts from Japan that had English letters on them that spelled nonsense or were misspelled or grammar disadvantaged (just as we often have Japanese symbols (and tattoo’s) that don’t mean what we think they do.

    I’ve been trying to find shirts like that and more about John Oats collection and obsession, but have been unable to procure either. Unfortunately, since the 80′s we’ve become a much smaller planet and like the Fisting shirt, everything I’ve seen of this nature seems premeditated. I’d love to find some genuine t’s like this but sites like engrish make it virtually impossible to tell the fraud from the real deal.

    The shirt is pretty funny though. I wonder what the dot over the ‘t’ is.