The Etiology and Elaboration of a Flagrant Mistranslation

A series of earlier Language Log posts have discussed the curious phenomenon seen in the grocery-store sign on the left: absurdly crude English mistranslations in bizarrely inappropriate contexts.

In "Gan: whodunnit, and how, and why?" (5/31/2006), I explained one of the sources of this phenomenon: several Chinese characters pronounced GAN1 or GAN4 -- and meaning such widely disparate things as "dry," "calendrical sign," "to do," and much else beside -- all got collapsed into one simplified character: 干. This has led to enormous confusion, especially when people who know next to no English rely on machine translation software to convert Chinese into English. The chaos caused by this combination of circumstances is vastly exacerbated by the fact that this little, three-stroke symbol also has a vulgar meaning when pronounced in the fourth tone, GAN4, namely "fuck," which is probably an extension of the regular sense of "do." Because GAN4 ("do") and GAN1 ("dry") are now both written with that little, three-stroke character, the damage is compounded by the enormous range of intended senses of GAN1/4 ("dry," "do," "act," "work," "undertake," "shield," "have to do with; be concerned with," "edge of a body of water," "be rude, impolite, blunt," "embarrass or annoy," "give the cold-shoulder to," "empty, hollow," measure word for a group of people, "trunk, stem, main part," "cadre," "competent, capable, able, talented," "go bad," "be a disaster," etc.), all of which are capable of coming out of the translation software as "fuck." Read full article>>>

Chinglish: Chinese Pen

Professor Michael from America is teaching in Xiamen University. He bought a pen in a convenient store in the campus. He found something interesting on the pen and shared in his blog.

If you have what problem
I answer this hard nut to crack for you
The thought which uses me answers your question

Of course, this is typical Chinglish, a way that Chinese people translate something from Chinese to English by Chinese grammer. For non-Chinese speaking people, it is difficult to understand. However, the professor likes it very much when he finally understood what those words stand for.

I put it in a more English way as below:

If you have any problems
I answer those tough questions [hard nut to crack] for you
The thought which comes from me answers your question

Maybe it's still Chinglish, but better to understand now. It's full of wisdom, isn't it? That's why the professor is happy with it and would like to buy one for those who also find the wisdom and humor here.

Thanks to Professor Michael: Our Year in Xiamen, China

Chinglish: To Male Service

In Chinese, "公"(pinyin-Gong) has different meanings, e.g. 公司(gongsi-business)，公众(gongzhong-public) and 公母(gongmu-male and female). When compared with "Individual Service"(个人业务) above, it's easier to understand the "To Male Service" should be "To Business Service" instead.

It's more funny to translate the English translation back to Chinese: 对男人的服务(Service only for men). This makes people think about some special things between men and women.

Chinglish: Lost in translation(CBC)

Colleen Ross was covering the Women's World Cup of soccer for CBC Radio in China. She just published her new article "Lost in translation- colourful Chinglish words enter global English " on CBC website.

She defined Chinglish as this way: Yes, Chinglish is the weird and wonderful result of an English dictionary colliding with Chinese ideograms that often have multiple meanings.

Some examples of Chinglish are illustrated in this article. A massage therapist advertises: "Relex your tired of bady"; a toilet for a disabled person is labelled "Deformed man toilet"; a slippery road is marked "Beware, the slippery are very crafty" (but they are!). "Drinktea" is hung on a shop door to mean it's closed (it also means "resting" in Mandarin).

Chinglish examples

She interviewed Hua Lin, a linguistics professor from University of Victoria. Lin says "if Mandarin Chinese ever becomes the first choice of a second language to learn, as English has been, there is … less of a chance for these Chinglish expressions to survive or make significant impact." A lot of useful stuffs are mentioned in this article, like Global Language Monitor(GLM), the influence of rising China to the world, etc.

Read the full article, click here.