A haphazard chronicle of my inevitable misadventures during a year in Vietnam and points east.

p.s. I'll be pitifully grateful if you send me email during my exile: TravelerKaty@hotmail.com

October 2002 November 2002 December 2002 January 2003 February 2003 March 2003 April 2003 May 2003 June 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 February 2006 March 2006 May 2006

 
No travelogue about China would be complete without a discussion of "Chinglish", a blanket term used to describe the many mysterious and enexplicable ways the Chinese torture the English language on signs and notices throughout the country.

In my observation, these mistakes come in three categories -- simple spelling errors, word spacing errors, and unbelievable errors of translation. The first type are the most frequent, of course. It is not uncommon to eat at a "Restawnt" or take your clothes to a "lanundy". Missing letters are quite common as well: "No Illegal Iscounts", for example. One store advertised "No Barm to the Enviornment". And because English letters are almost as foreign to them as Chinese characters are to us, you often see english words, particularly on buses for some reason, printed backwards as though in a mirror. At least it's harder to determine if they've made any spelling errors that way.

I believe the second type of error occurs because all Chinese words are short, so they take it upon themselves to break English words down into more manageable chunks. So you might go to a "Photog Rap Her Shop" or see a "Fire Exting Uis Herbox". Because the concept of syllables is not a Chinese one, you will also find English words broken at strange points in the interests of space. A sign might say "No Smoki-" then continue with the "ng" on the next line.

But the most entertaining form of Chinglish has got to be the mistranslations. It is painfully clear that no native speaker was consulted in making most signs, both private and public, and in general I doubt that English-speaking Chinese people were consulted either. It is in this manner that you get official signs that say things like "A forest brings endless vitality, and a single spark may needs to its destroy," or "Endeavor for Renewable Entrepreneurship." The giant sign upon entering the Chenglu Expressway is "Welcome to Here Again" and at Zhang Jia Jie park you are warned "No Firing in the Key Protected Area". In Yangshuo, a town that is one of the more accurate actually in terms of its English, I could check in at the Fairy Tourist Center, get my hair cut at the Jia Mei Professional Hair Making, or see local photography at "The Gallery of Tanned Guile Landscape Photographers" I don't even begin to know what they were getting at with that one.

You may thing this mangled spelling and syntax would be trying to a tourist, but at least words in English are open for interpretation, whereas after 30 days in China I still only knew three Chinese characters and six spoken phrases. Believe me, I welcome the opportunity to visit the Fairy Tourist Center.

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren


posted by Katy at 12:01 AM