Rambling with The Bellars in Cambodia

     For the longest time I've thought that I have the perfect business opportunity while living overseas.

     As foreigners, and native English speakers living in another country you can often be bombarded with advertisements and even billboards that are written in English.  When we lived in Battambang we collected different types of clean water bottles because we truly enjoyed reading the English descriptions of the purification process on the bottle.  When  you go to restaurants it can also be humorous to read through the menu as many times the translation of the type of food you are ordering suggests you are eating something quite unique!

     So I've decided that if I ever needed to make a little extra money all I need to do is contact restaurants and different companies that like to advertise in English and offer to proof-read their materials before they decide to print several thousand items with very poor english on them.  

     The picture above is of a wrapper for an electric mosquito killer that we recently purchased.  It reads: 

beautiful enduring

safe encironm-eatal

piotection

usage convenienie

Hmmm.....yet another one to add to our collection!

     This is also a reminder to us of the importance of really focusing on language learning and good communication.  We were told a story the other day about a man who has come to Cambodia to 'preach the Gospel', but he didn't believe in the necessity of good, solid language learning.  Our friends heard him preach the other day, and because speaking about religious things in the Cambodian language requires you do have an entirely different vocabulary (which this man didn't know about) he ended up preaching total heresy!  Rather than saying that humans are totally incapable of getting rid of our sin and that without Jesus we can never get close to God, he stated that humans did not sin and that we could be like God!  Wow!  Getting three or four words wrong can communicate the opposite of what you really meant to say!