The intent is clear enough—the bubbly hearts drive it home—but the English is, to put it charitably, unidiomatic.
Sunlee outdoor ad, Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco.
It’s the sort of awkward phrasing you might expect to find on the Engrish website or in one of linguist Victor Mair’s “lost in translation” posts on Language Log. But I spotted the billboard near San Francisco’s Civic Center on one of the most heavily traveled thoroughfares in the city. (This stretch of Van Ness Avenue is also US 101.) The message is pretty clearly directed at the English-speaking market.
The advertiser, Sunlee, is based in Thailand but has two corporate offices in California, where there are many English-speaking copywriters who might have suggested a more felicitous headline before the big bosses ordered an expensive billboard.
On the other hand, “Aroma that you will fall in love” does have a certain enigmatic, even poetic, charm.
Psst . . . Nancy, paragraph three: "there"?
On point, I wondered if the tagline might be an attempt at a haiku tag, but too many syllables, and Thailand.
And, the nonidiomatic phrasing is probably one that you'll remember. (Contrasted with a tagline that might have ended in *gasp* a preposition?)
Posted by: Steve Hall | November 04, 2011 at 07:50 AM
@Steve: Thanks for letting me know about the dropped word! As for ending a tagline (or a sentence) with a preposition, it's one of those zombie rules that keeps eating our brains: http://www.grammarphobia.com/grammar.html
Posted by: Nancy Friedman | November 04, 2011 at 08:06 AM
Maybe "Aroma" is meant to rhyme with "I toldja"? Sorry, I got nothing for this one. It's just beautiful though.
Posted by: Jessica | November 04, 2011 at 08:40 AM
It reminds me of phrases like "the order it was received", but I'm not sure it's quite the same problem. It could be that someone was avoiding ending a sentence with a preposition but didn't know where to put it, or it could be a failure to grasp the proper idiom.
Posted by: Jonathon | November 04, 2011 at 11:17 AM