Posted on 10/15/2006 10:16:32 AM PDT by kenavi
Beijing stamps out poor English Chinese street signs
Occasionally, a sign makes sense
China has launched a fresh drive to clamp down on bad English in the run-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Previous attempts to wipe out Chinglish - the mistranslated phrases often seen on Chinese street signs and product labels - have met with little success.
Emergency exits at Beijing airport read "No entry on peacetime" and the Ethnic Minorities Park is named "Racist Park".
Beijing city authorities will issue new translation guides by the end of the year, Xinhua news agency said.
Running joke
The booklets would be handed out to hotels and shopping malls, on public transport and at tourist attractions.
Chinglish has become a running joke among many foreigners in China, and several websites have been set up listing humorous examples of mistranslation.
A road sign on Beijing's Avenue of Eternal Peace warns of a dangerous pavement with the words: "To Take Notice of Safe; The Slippery are Very Crafty".
Menus frequently list items such as "Corrugated iron beef", "Government abuse chicken" and "Chop the strange fish".
The mistranslations arise because many Chinese words express concepts obliquely and can be interpreted in multiple ways, making translation a minefield for non-English speakers.
The municipal government in Beijing first tried to stamp out the problem just a month after being awarded the 2008 Olympics back in 2001.
A year later the Beijing Tourism Bureau set up a hotline for visitors and residents to tip off examples of bad English, and said results would be reviewed by a panel of English professors and expatriates.
Title is my own. Original title: "Beijing Stamps Out Bad English".
This happens between every language, but as someone who is studying Chinese, I find it is especially difficult to translate Chinese and English into each other. A literal translation rarely makes sense in the other language. These signs are probably literal translations, or software translations of the appropriate Chinese characters.
It's always best here to keep the original title. It helps avoid duplicate threads. I don't see that your title is any better than the original, so why change it?
To prevent duplication, please do not alter the heading. Thanks.
> Chinglish has become a running joke among many foreigners in China, and several websites have been set up listing humorous examples of mistranslation. <
How about somebody's giving us a URL or two? I'm sure I'm not the only one who'd much enjoy seeing same!
Right! - Like those that translate "Islam" to mean "PEACE"
Now that's funnier than any example of Chinglish !
google is your friend.
http://images.google.com/images?svnum=10&hl=en&lr=&q=Chinglish&btnG=Search
LMAO!
Chinglisf Files:
http://www.silverladder.com/literature/chinglish/chinglish.htm
More URLs at the BBC site.
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US! MAKE YOUR TIME!
For some Chinese signs:
http://www.engrish.com/category_index.php?category=Engrish%20from%20Other%20Countries
They have 186 entries.
For Japanese:
http://www.engrish.com
This is a hugh site. Caution, prease! Riquids are not in mouth while picture rooking by typingboard of compute machine.
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