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Referenced in the BBC article! »

More!

Now the kirchen picture has more than 4,200 hits, and the pushy sign picture has more than 4,400!¬† It’s all because of that BBC article.¬† Could someone who can link to it read it, and let me know what it says?¬† Better yet, could somebody cut and paste the article and send it to me?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 17th, 2006 at 11:25 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

2 Responses to “More!”

  1. Editor B Says:
    October 18th, 2006 at 1:19 am

    Here’s the text of the article:

    Beijing stamps out poor English
    Chinese street sign
    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.

  2. MF Says:
    October 19th, 2006 at 1:04 am

    Thanks!

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