Chinglish, origins of

[flameproof]

A nice article about the origin of our beloved Chinglish, enjoy:

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005195.html

[c_redman]

I saw that the other day. As a scientist, it's a great feeling when you can finally find the cause of some strange phenomenon, and then reproduce the effect on demand to prove it. Now, if only we could find out where "Stir-fried wikipedia" comes from.

[gato]

I have 金山快译2003, and I can confirm.

[fireball9261]

The great simplified Chinese strike again!

The traditional character for 干 is 乾 (gan1). The traditional character for "fuck" is 幹 (gan4). Both are totally different and pronounced different, so they should not be translated wrong at all if they were in traditional characters.

[Stefani]

This is hilarious! I hope no one saw me laughing so hard!

[msittig]

I've been trying to download the software, but all I can find is a shareware version without the Chinese->English capability. I'd really like to try out the words 休闲 and 火锅, to confirm some other data points.

The stir-fried wikipedia thing is hilarious. I'd never realized it was so common.

[Woodpecker]

That isn't Chinglish, that's Engrish or Manglish!! XD XD

Does anyone know what an antithetical couplet ocean is...?

[mythia]

let me try...休闲=rest idle (sort of makes sense ) 火锅=fire pan

and anti...cou...ocean.... means....对联海。。。？？

[zhwj]

re: stir-fried wikipedia: One of the commenters in the Boingboing thread provides the most likely answer:

Google "雞樅". Scroll down a bit, and what word jumps out at you?

The first search result* to have any English words in its title is "雞樅- Wikipedia".

It's easy to imagine a non-English speaker seeing this and mistaking it for a translation!

"雞樅- Wikipedia" turns up on the seventh page of results for me.