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Years ago, while translating a Japanese movie about an ancient document with clues to a secret treasure, I noticed something odd: when the document finally appeared on the screen, it was written in English… and it was actually an end user agreement for Mac software!

After that, I encountered similar “filler English” during other translation projects. I never thought much about it until a few weeks ago when I saw this Sailor Moon image being passed around online:

On a lark, I asked Twitter users if they knew of other examples of this phenomenon. I expected only a handful of answers, but there were so many reactions that my phone battery died. A few days later, the Twitter thread was translated for a Japanese site, and the comments there featured even more examples – including the opposite in which English-language stuff uses random Japanese quotes as filler!

So, because there’s so much enthusiasm around the topic, I decided to compile all the answers I got and share them here. Many thanks to everyone who contributed!

I’m guessing there are many more examples out there, new and old. So if you know of anything not included here, let me know on Twitter or in the comments and I can add it to this page!