Homegrown.
My colleague Ca-Mie De Souza 嘉美 in Beijing delivered a correspondent report on Chinglish yesterday.
In China to standardise English used on bilingual signboards the most interesting statement is related to my Possible approaches to China's bilingual sign-makers. A shop owner is quoted saying
我们没有专门的翻译，主要我们还是邀请别人，或者是我们简单地通过电脑的金山快译和英汉字典。招牌之类的可能就用简单的，文字并没有太复杂的。We don't have professional translators, so we ask someone else or use the computer's Kingsoft translation tool and an English-Chinese dictionary. Signs usually have simple words so we try to translate them ourselves"(Kingsoft is a popular Chinese-English translation software in the PRC, original Chinese quotation from www.xin.sg)
This strongly supports my guess that a lot of offline Chinglish is actually produced online, don't you think?
posted by olr — 纪韶融 @ 4/12/2007
13 Comments
13Comments:
Actually It is.
There are even several of my classmates use that way for translation homework. It seems so popular in public.
Google translator(google language tools) also do some contribution.
看看这个http://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/2007-04/22/content_6011558.htm
"创新"应当是Innovation吧
用imagination太简单了
这可是国际性会议
Hi Olr, keep doing good ya~
I will try to send you some public signs here FYI.
Olive
Guangzhou
hey~it's so much fun to read ur blog,,I've some chinglish to share,,so what e-mail address should I send to?
Thx
Ace: thanks for confirming that.
Olive: thanks go to Guangzhou, keep them coming.
Anonymous: I am delighted you enjoy this blog.
Please send your Chinglish to [chinglish at olliradtke.de]. Thank you.
Well,thanks so much for your constructive blog,a simply wonderful blog for starters.
Would your goodself introduce the same case in Deutschland for me if the pidgin language like Denglish also occurs in Germany。
And is it really that most germans speak good to excellent english？
Well,thanks so much for your constructive blog,a simply wonderful blog for starters.
Would your goodself introduce the same case in Deutschland for me if the pidgin language like Denglish also occurs in Germany。
And is it really that most germans speak good to excellent english？
Vielen Dank für den blog.
Why no 评论 under "I am sorry, Beijing University ..." ?
Anonymous: Thanks for pointing out the missing comment section, I have no idea why it wasn't available. Reposted the whole entry, now it works. Please feel free to comment now.
Anonymous 2: I'd love to do that, but no time, really. I found a neat site, though, which features a real Denglish-Dictionary:
http://www.www-kurs.de/denglisch.htm
Machine translation doesn't works very well, does it? For example there are jokes about google translator about Chinese.
Those mistakes comes from tiny company which manufacture，or print or design outdoor advertisements, I believe. No one check them before hang them out.
By the way, recently I plan to post some Chinglish about healthcare and medical service in my blog. If you can give me some suggestions, I would be thantful about that.
And, it seems there are not any feeds out of you blog?
Hi Arthur,
I'd be glad to help you out.
Please write to chinglish at olliradtke.de.
Thanks,
olr.
I agree with you some signs are laughing matter, but remember who do you dealing with, the poor uneducated farmer or small business owner... Also does it matter with imagination or innovation in Bill Gates poster? maybe that the way they want to translate, beside some languages you can't 100% translate directly, can you? Would you like to teach in BJ U? I wish you don't have German accent at all, that is funny too.
Hi,
I think it does matter in fact if a poster that is shown in public in front of thousands of Chinese students and million viewers worldwide says imagination instead of innovation. Why? Because it is a public PR event for the university with international attention and students should be taught to be aware of the differences.
Doesn't it come down to this: when the university doesn't care, why should we?
Teaching at BJU would be not bad at all...
Best,
olr.
P.S. Yez, sum Tschermans reahly doo heff a shtrong aksent...
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