Enjoy.
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Saturday, February 21, 2009
Collection of "Chinglish"
I was in China in 2000-2001, the year of the 2008 Beijing Olympics Campaign and reported collision of Wang Wei's fighter jet with a US spy plane. It was a fascinating year to be in China. While I was there, I found some great examples of "Chinglish". I also took pictures of signs that had a certain cultural charm about them.
Enjoy.
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Enjoy.
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7 comments:
Thanks for your post. Some of the English translation in the photos show how inadequate it is to just translate without regard to register and word-choice usage in the English language.
Lee
It reminds me of the results I receive when translating emails from Japanese to English using Babelfish.
Good translation takes human intelligence, especially a sprachgefühl for both languages. This real sense of the language may only be acquired by someone who have truly lived the languages, not just learned them.
Lee
This idea applies to the use and abuse of idioms. I had a wonderful student who, in an attempt to sound natural, spoke in idioms. She would say things like, "Top of the morning to you, Kat! Can I help you carry those books; they are such a ball and chain. You look like you are down in the dumps,- I hope our papers aren't making you blue. Well, I gotta hit the road. Ya, know- class is more than a hop, skip and a jump away! Later, Gator!"
How funny! Were you two very close? Did you ever talk to her in a similar way?
Lee
I really enjoyed her way of speaking, but I couldn't keep up with her expansive bank of expressions enough to respond in the same way. I guess our friendship started with office hours. We held office hours in our flats for an hour several evenings a week. It was a great opportunity for cultural exchange (photos, movies, music, conversation) that would not have been possible in a more formal setting. The flat was small (one room minus the bathroom and kitchen/laundry corner ), so I'd have students sitting on the floor,bed, and mini balcony. I think that this helped to build friendships and broke some of the expected formalities. In our flats, students could open up a lot more than they could in class.
Even with the expected formalities gone, it's still amazing that this student could pile up idioms like that in conversations. I guess in America, people usually don't talk like that unless they live in a TV series like "Two and a Half Men" or something.
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