Lost in Translation?
July 14, 2008 
I know what you're thinking, you crass people, you. You're just bursting to say something devastatingly witty that involves the word "crap" right now, aren't you? Uh-huh; I knew it.
Alright, then, rather than stifle it, let's just get this all out of systems, shall we? It'll be cathartic. Turn to the person next to you...what, there's no one nearby? Ok, go get someone. I'll wait.
Ok, are there at least 2 of you here now? Good. Now, look at the cake, turn to the person(s) next to you, and make all the obvious, disgusting, and profane jokes you can think of. You get extra points for saying the exact same thing at the same time. Running low on material? Try guessing what that inscription says, or what occasion the cake was for. (For example: Just-Found-Out-My-Boyfriend-Is-Cheating-On-Me Day, with an inscription that includes the word "eat".)
All done? Got it all out of your system? Can we discuss this like rational adults now?
Nah, I didn't think so, either.
Before you comment: yes, we all know what it looks like, people, so there's no need to spell it out for us, mmkay? Let's try to keep our comments as clean as possible, or failing that, to at least use the "*" key when necessary. Thanks, all!
Reader Comments (89)
I mean in any language flies on poop is just wrong, right?
How is that right, in any language, what am I missing!
Oh maybe the inscription says "Oh, Poop!"
That's gotta be it!
oh i hope someone wasnt expecting that to be bee's around a hive and ended up with THAT instead!
I cannot even begin to imagine what inspired this er.... creation.
At least some people are thinking outside the box.
It says Happy Birthday in traditional Chinese characters...
I'm looking for the fondant diaper that would make this the perfect companion cake to the baby cake in previous post. :-P
Thanks for the translation, Jaime, although it's oddly disappointing. I guess I was hoping for something a bit more explanatory, you know?
I get it! It's a "sheet" cake!
I've seen a few poop cakes in my time. This one isn't too bad... except I'm a little confused by the brown polka dots around the pile... I'm trying to figure out the logistics, when really I should just stop staring at the picture.
Someone really didn't get enough attention as a child.
What did it say before? The image has been run through PhotoShop or something similar judging by the looks of the cloning in the big open spaces. It was probably even funnier with the original writing.
Dang. Annie beat me to it.
The biggest comment we had here at work about this one was..."eeyyew" and "yuk". We wondered if this was meant as an insult to someone.
Hmmm... poo and flies on a birthday cake? I don't care how good the cake tastes, it just looks disgusting!
Actually, a little pile of poo is a good luck symbol in japan. Here's an explanation from another site (url at end).
Dear Alice,
While browsing through the souvenir shops at Narita Airport, I came across a curious Japanese good-luck charm. It featured a gold poop. Why gold poop? -- Diane O., Redmond, Washington, USA
Dear Diane,
What you're missing is a pleasing piece of word play. The product you saw is called Kin no Unko (The Golden Poo), a name that plays on the fact that the Japanese word for poop (unko) starts with the same "oon" sound as a completely unrelated word that means "luck." Japanese enjoy this kind of pun -- traditional storytelling is full of them -- which may help explain why more than 2.5 million of the lucky little loads have sold in the last seven years.
There are many word plays in Japanese religion because puns make information easier to teach and remember. One example is a talisman in the shape of a frog used to pray for the safe return of a loved one, the pun being that the word for frog (kaeru) is a synonym of the verb "to return." "This Golden Poo is very much part of that tradition," Mitsuhashi asserted.
Furthermore, there is a long history of poo-related worship in Japan, according to Mitsuhashi. "There are more gods in the Shinto religion than it is possible to count, and they reside just about everywhere, inhabiting natural things like trees, rocks and waterfalls," he said. "Bodily functions are very important -- think what a problem it would be if a person couldn't defecate or urinate properly -- so it's natural that people worshipped deities linked to these functions." Mitsuhashi, who is in his 60s, remembers his parents burying a pair of god figures, one male and one female, under the privy in his childhood home.
At the risk of getting too graphic, I really must address shape because everyone I spoke to brought it up. Diane, you described the Kin no Unko as looking "disturbing like soft ice cream," while Fujii, its creator, expressed it as a "nice tatsumaki-shape (tornado-shape)."
The difference in perception may lie in toilet types: a Japanese-style toilet consists of a shallow basin built into the floor over which you squat. There's little or no water in the basin until you flush the toilet. So to someone who grew up using Japanese-style toilets, a healthy result would be in the shape of a spiral pile.
from tinyurl dot com/58xut2
Tom,
I never thought this site would be considered educational, but I for one have now learned something.
That still doesn't explain the flies, though. ;)
It reminds me of my days aboard ship when we called the soft ice cream "dog" for obvious reasons.
Oh, there was an article about poop on Salon years ago! There's a good amount of gross-out humor here -- I doubt it's a totally straight-faced Shinto thing:
http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/1999/12/13/poop/
You know, for some reason I am reminded of a cake I bought years ago from a grocery store bakery. The label described it as: 1/2 SHT BUTTCREME.
Which, obviously, stands for half sheet buttercreme. So, why it reminds me of this particular cake I have NO idea.
@anon...very, funny!
reminds me of a t-shirt a guy wore at my highschool. it was gary larson-esque in it's color illustration but the subject matter was not. it was a bar scene with a presumed male fly asking a presumed female fly 'is this STOOL taken?'
i about fell out of my chair in regards to the 'sheet' cake. that was TOO much. *snicker*
Oh, that's just nasty! And my sister always tells me that I have the sense of humour of a 10-year-old boy, and she's right, but even I wouldn't do that one!!
I just came here to say what Tom already said! The little pile of poop is a pretty big thing over there! You can find it on jewelry, clothing, stationary and even food ;)
I've heard of sh** on a shingle, but never cr** on a cake!
"Sorry I ran over your dog"
And to think that for some people this would be an erotic cake.
Amanda, I'm guessing the polka dots meant that rabbits were involved.
And that's just a truly mean spirited cake. Think about it - you're a fly. You're buzzing around, and you see a fresh pile of brown buffet. You tell your buddies. They come buzzing along, and when you tuck into what you thought was dookie, you think "What the hell? Butter frosting?"
Wow. I don't feel so clean any more.
"Sorry I ran over your dog"
You nailed it. I haven't laughed so hard in a long time.
I used to find these presents in our yard regularly. One day I drove up and witnessed our neighbor watching their dog leave a deposit. We had a friendly but direct conversation that (to my amazement) didn't result in an apology.
The image has been run through PhotoShop or something similar judging by the looks of the cloning in the big open spaces. It was probably even funnier with the original writing.
Based on the placement of the clone tool markings that I see, I bet the clone tool was used to remove the name of the recipient.
What a hilarious cake. I'm going to make it for my husband's next birthday...bathroom humor is a necessity in our home.
"Sorry I ran over your dog"...that's hysterical. Way better than "Happy Birthday". :)
Love it!
For other poo-food that's more funny than gross, check out this link: http://www.fundistraction.com/2007/08/poop-like-pastries.html
Thanks to CW reader Ashlee for sending it in!
Re:Tom
The term "Lucky little S#!t comes to mind...
Is it wrong to be more grossed out by all of the flies than the poo??
I just don't know what to say other than AW CRAP, I forgot your birthday!
No, I said I want a pupu platter cake!!! Not poopoo! Ugh!
I love this cake. Having just spent two years in Japan and having seen Unko on many 'lucky' items...why not cake!?
Asia has some very stinky extracts for food creations. I wonder if the cake smells and tastes as bad/wrong as it looks? Ok...off to the bathroom because just the thought is making me want to hurl...i bet there is an extract for that too...when will it ever end!
Poop w/flies + cake = Ewwww!
FYI, where I come from, it costumary to wish "good s***" before a school exam, for success - you're not supposed to thank the wisher or it will be bad luck.
Cultures are weird.
great theories, people, but it says "Happy Birthday" in chinese. so...that pretty much just makes it stranger.
It's most probably from Japan. From my bad memory of Japanese lessons the same characters for happy birthday can be used as Chinese. And Japan has a poo fad right now, you can buy collectible little plush "piles" of that shape that go on your mobile phone, sit on your desk, whatever. They have a few diminutive words for it, the equivalent of "poopy" or "doo-doo" or something I guess.
/end foreign language nerditude..
When I was in Korea poop was also everywhere.
I was interested to read the comment about the poop/luck pun in Japanese. The Korean word "ddeong" is a false cognate with the English "dung" so if the the little soft-serve poop swirls my students doodled on their books wasn't enough of a give away, the word is essentially the same.
I still don't understand how poop is such a cute, marketable decal for children's pencil cases and the like...
I saw one character called Dongchimee who pretty much blew my mind:
http://www.dalkiworld.com/about/c_dongchimee.asp
I also got this dung coffee mug as a gift while I was in Korea:
http://seoulseek.blogspot.com/2007/05/jave-jibe.html
It would go well with a slice of lucky poop cake!
The inscription says "Happy Birthday" in traditional Chinese characters. No idea about the flies on poop, thing, though. That's just odd.
I made a cake like this for my mothers' group at church not long after my husband left me...and mext to the pile I wrote "MY LIFE IS..."
It's Japanese. Some characters are similar between Chinese and Japanese, but with the intention here being to wish a 'lucky' (the poo) Happy Birthday (basic translation) it is definitely Japanese.
The cake says "Sheng Ri Kuai Le," Chinese for "Happy Birthday"
There is a restaurant in Taipei that has a bathroom motif - customers sit on toilets, eat out of toilet bowls, and much of the food is excrement themed. I had chocolate ice cream there once. It was pretty good. Maybe this cake is from there?
I love your site!
One million flies can't be wrong...
It definitely isn't Japanese. There's an extra character to "birthday" in Japanese, the "kuai" character doesn't have the same meaning in Japanese and Chinese, and Japanese does not use the traditional Chinese form for the "happy" character. That's definitely a Chinese cake (as well as a Chinese picture, from the green text at the lower right).
"生日快樂/Shengri kuaile" is definitely Mandarin Chinese. Japanese would be "誕生日おめでとう/Tanjoubi omedetou," or some variation thereof.
Looks like a dump cake to me.
What's with the Japanese and their weird obsession with crap?
I love poop, especially when it's a cake! Thanks for the link Brendada!
<p>We had a poo cake on my externship!!!! It was a pile of poo!!! <BR/><BR/><BR/>It was a really sh***y experience, by the way. =) lol.</p>