Duolingo celebrates mistranslations with 'Museum of Wonky English'

Attention—if you don't brush up on your language skills, you might end up in a museum. At least, in Japan that could happen, because Duolingo has opened a "Museum of Wonky English" that showcases some of the funniest Japanese to English mistranslations it could find. Created via Tokyo agency UltraSuperNew, the free pop up museum is located in Harajuku Tokyo, and contains 16 of the best examples of "wonky English" found all over Japan, from menus to signs to t-shirt slogans. It will be open until Dec. 7. Supporting the campaign is a hero film that invites people to visit the museum and participate in a social activation to share the humorous and interesting mistranslations they come across in daily life on Duolingo's Twitter channel: @duolingo_japan. The best submissions will be exhibited in the museum and those who sent them will be rewarded with a free month of Super Duolingo. “Why do mistakes have such a bad rep?" said Andrés Aguilar, associate creative director, UltraSuperNew. "They’re the unsung language-learning heroes, and we wanted this campaign to settle the scores." Francois Claverie, group creative director, UltraSuperNew added: “The beauty of wonky English translations is entirely lost on those who don’t have a good enough command of the English language. Roughly 88 million people in Japan are being left out! By giving them a taste of how wonderful these mistranslations can be, we’re hoping that they’ll give Duolingo a try, to be able to quickly appreciate them by themselves too.”

Duolingo celebrates mistranslations with 'Museum of Wonky English'

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