Hilarious. Remember China in 2001; the english translations are adorable. In fact, couldn't someone make a whole webproject out of these?

I recall seeing gigantic buildings with huge ornate gold lettering, with mispelt or ununderstandable English.

Anyway, don't washers/dryers have fixed cycles??

what does this mean in whatever language it is written ? Japanese ?

Joao: http://www.engrish.com/

That's a JR (Japan Rail) ticket machine. I don't read kanji but I imagine it literally says the same thing. It's the meaning that gets lost...

It says it is currently undergoing regularly scheduled maintenance in Japanese.

that's fun ! fixed in english, maintenance in Japanese... lost in translation.

Well, the Japanese text speaks more of an "inspection" than of a "maintenance".

The Engrish decryption map is thus:

"regularly scheduled" ➞ "fixed cycle"
"inspection" ➞ "is checked"

:-)

Thanks MV! So essentially I was right... the meaning was lost but the words are more or less right... :)

Awesome bit of linguistics here! :)

好的

What??

You can't read Kanji? This strikes me as surprising since you live in Japan, and are even enrolled in a university.

I can read the Japanese. I just thought the English was funny. Having said that, my Japanese is not that good. The university program at Hitotsubashi is the business school and the courses are in English to try to make the school more International. Which is perfect for me. ;-)

In fact, Joi's Japanese has deteriorated so badly, he enrolled a Kumon course and I update Joi daily on the newest Japanese slang ;)

Joi Ito : huh ? (sur les traductions japonais-anglais, via LLM)