ChingLish: More Strange Uses of English in the Far East
The Japanese, as shown in my last post, have developed ingenious ways of using English properly to mask their true intention (recruiting for the Self-Defense Forces).
In China, however, authorities are worried about their public displays of English translations (example shown), especially since the world came to the Forbidden City for the 2008 Olympics.
The BBC on its Web site has done a cute job of aggregating some examples. Go take a look.
Posted by Gary McCarty
This particular example is one of my main reasons why I think Chinglish should be left alone, wherever possible. What’s nicer, this or “Keep off the grass”? I know which one I’d pay more attention to. Besides, Chinglish shows that someone is trying. I wouldn’t even know where to start on translation something into Mandarin.
Of course, you can’t have that kind of thing cropping up in business documents or anything like that but you’d hope a professional translation agency was being used anyway!