Chinglish signs

[Kenny同志]

This is a picture I took this afternoon on my way to the bus station when I had collected two books from an express courier outlet.

In case anyone is interested, one book was 中國通史 by 呂思勉 and the other The Essential World History by Williiam J. Duiker and Jackson J. Spielvogel.

Here's the picture.

[tooironic]

"Large building". Hehe. Is that any better than the oft-seen "mansion" though?

[jbradfor]

Thought this was too good not to share. Virtual beer to whomever can figure out the Chinese.

[XiaoXi]

Did you ever stop to think _why_ there is so much Chinglish in China? Its because the bosses are too stingy to hire anyone with decent English (a non Chinese perhaps) to at least check the translations. Its amazing how such incredibly short sentences can be wrong such as the famous - 小心地滑 translating to "Carefully slip". Why must I slip? I have to slip but I need to do it carefully? Two words and they get it wrong - amazing. Most of the time what happens in the boss is too tight to even hire a Chinese translator (never mind getting a native English speaker) and just tells "Jenny" from another department she needs to translate them all. Her English qualification - she's a young person...

Always the cheapest option is the one they take. One time in a restaurant I came across a menu with English translations that were so funny I actually wanted to one menu away. One dish was called something to the effect of "The crab fries the cabbage and tomatoes". Does he now? Wouldn't it be better to get the chef to do that.

[jbradfor]

Exactly. And she has the brilliant idea of using a free on-line machine translation program. Problem solved! The other issue, of course, is that not speaking English, they really have no idea how bad it sounds.

Here's the full sign. [Name of hotel removed to protect the guilty.]

After seeing the Chinese, the Chinglish makes perfect sense to me. Which is actually really scary when you think about it.

[li3wei1]

favourite menu items:

"nest of genes"

"sweat and sour fish"

[Kenny同志]

I am curious. How would you translate 祥瑞大厦?

[jbradfor]

Xiangrui Tower or Xiangrui Building.

We don't really have a lot of different names (in common usage, at least) for different types of buildings. At least in American English, "mansion" refers to a very large and expensive single-family house. As referenced in #2, one often sees it in translations of Chinese (especially Hong Kong) apartment buildings, but it sounds funny to my ears.

[anonymoose]

[Lu]

"sweat and sour fish"

I agree that this is funny, but I wouldn't really consider it Chinglish. It's just a spelling mistake. Really, why wouldn't 'sweat' rhyme with 'meat' or 'heat'? There's probably some linguistic reason, but even a native speaker with rusty spelling could conceivably get this wrong. Now the hotel sign is a different story...

[Kenny同志]

Thanks Jbradfor.

[liuzhou]

I agree that this is funny, but I wouldn't really consider it Chinglish.

Me neither. I've seen it in England. One London shop was selling "Extra sweat strawberries"

[Outofin]

As a revenge to Chinglish signs, now an American cruise starts to offer 绿分裂豌豆汤 and 胆小和迅速增长的妓女 to Chinese tourists.

http://photo.weibo.com/2256231983/wbphotos/large/photo_id/3495983222873480

[fanglu]

胆小和迅速增长的妓女

This sounds quite scary.

I've often wondered why we don't see more crazy Chinese signs. Given the cavalier attitude people seem to have towards their Chinese tattoos, you'd think western cities would be littered with 为卖 and 向让 signs.