Synonyms are trouble.
I went to the Beijing Tourism Bureau website today and a most colorful flash banner urged me to do a rather strange thing: "Contact the Olympics".
I don't know how long this banner is online already and I wonder how long it will take them to realize they should take if offline pretty soon again. Why do so?
The problem is ti3yan4 体验 and gan3shou4 感受 mean basically the same thing: to feel or experience with (in my understanding!) 体验 having a stronger emphasis on physical experience. All in all it is definitely not about writing an email to Jacques Rogge.
Suggestion: Break it down - "Experience Beijing and the Olympics", maybe even: "Experience Beijing and feel the Olympics". Native speakers anyone?
posted by olr — 纪韶融 @ 6/14/2008
20 Comments
20Comments:
Or "Touch the Olympics". That would be a pretty typical inspirational slogan, and 'touch' is probably more likely to be mistranslated as 'contact' than 'feel' would be...?
Thanks, Roland. I still wouldn't know, though, what to expect from "touching" an event. Have you seen this as a standard translation somewhere?
紀先生：
I appreciate your blog so much as it is a special blog. Have you ever been to Hong Kong? There is nearly no Chinglish, well, at least not that obivous, but that's not the case for students +v+.
Guess what, Chinglish is always the major problem in my English writing. My teacher said, it's because students nowadays in HK is so lazy that even don't want to touch the dictionary, I mean the real one, e.g.Oxford. We tend to rely on online dictionary most probably, but the words may not be the correct one, or it's for alternative use. Will it be another main source when people need to translate signs in China?
I hope you can understand what I said, as originally I think it won't be a good choice to express in English, but I know I do need practicing.^^
Angel
Hi Angel,
many thanks for your comment. I am pretty sure free online dictionaries (especially the bad ones, but which one isn't?) are a major source for Chinglish production in mainland China.
Interesting development that you're reporting about, HK students aren't reading English literature any longer?
Cheers,
纪韶融。
紀先生：
Well, campare with English, Chinese sentence pattern and word's part of speech(詞性) is quiet different. Some sentence like "I very like her(我非常喜歡她)" should be corrected as "I love her very much". That's another type of Chinglish, or a kind of translating word by word, haha. If students do spend some time in checking it on dictionary, as there are extra information like sample sentences, I believe they won't have mistake like that.
By the way, I think the most popular online dictionary is yahoo. To be honest, yahoo is not bad, but may contain some uncommon words. I am using Cambridge dictation(http://dictionary.cambridge.org/) now.
Angel =)
Thanks for the dictionary info, Angel!
Cheers.
What about "Experience Beijing, enjoy the Olympics"?
-Silvano
纪先生你好
第一次看你的博客
比较有意思。
看到你们学汉语和我们学英语的区别了，你们都比较好动，中国学生比较呆板，用学science的方法去学语言。
其实，有时候有些词没必要去区分他们的区别。他们都是一样的意思，至少很多中国人都不知道他们的区别。“体验”和“感受”不同的地方是发音和拼写，呵呵，你觉得呢
有时候是为了避免重复，中国人觉得文章里重复的单词太多了，是自己水平不高，就创造了好多不同的词组。
多看 多记，习惯了就好了。
They've changed it to "Embrace the Olympics". Looks better now.
They've not changed it until now
Is it better to say: Enjoy Beijing and Experience the Olympics ?
To my understanding, first TiYan (体验) should be a totally new shock to those who have never been to China, and this TiYan contains much more things than watching Olympic games. So the second GanShou (感受) is just a common feeling to foreigner (after all, Olympics is coming to China the first time), so the feeling of watching the games is not so shcking as 'enjoy Beijing', I am sure. Meaning, though TiYan and GanShou are almost the same thing, but we should choose a stronger and more emotional word for TiYan, the first one. And what is more, enjoying your being in China, and in Beijing or somewhere in China, is a thing which lasts much much longer than wtahcing Olympics games which only last for less than a month.
Cheers.
Jack
"Enjoy the Olympic", maybe that is what they implied.
中国有一种修辞手法，叫做“排比”
Come to Beijing and Enjoy the Olympic Game
Dear Olr,
In most of Hong Kong secondary school, English literature is not a part of their syllabus. Hong Kong students have not known British writers like Jane Austen, George Orwell, etc.
On the other hand, so many Hong Kong students do not stay at RTHK Radio 6, a BBC World Service local relay. I do not think next generation Hong Konger can write fluent English as colonial era.
Martin Oei 黃世澤
(Oei is my Indonesian and Dutch surname. )
纪先生,
您好
5年前在北京的时候,我的加拿大朋友说我chinglish非常棒! 所以我看了你的博客后,真的很感谢.也很感慨!
现在我生活在德国,不讲chinglish了,但开始讲germese.haha.
有空看看我的germese网站.
www.chinesisch-beratung.de
Coco
To Angel: Some sentence like "I very like her(我非常喜歡她)" should be corrected as "I love her very much".
Actually you can use "I really like her" to keep the same sentence structure. It depends on the words you use. =)
And my 2 cents on the sign:
Taste of Beijing's grandeur; Feel the Olympic splendor
Sure, it's not as "compact". But I feel that English cannot match Chinese in compactness. If you look up ancient Chinese prose, one sentence can be expanded out into a whole paragraph.
I think that is the true loss though. Because assuming you read a constant number of words per minute ... you can cover more information if you are reading wen yan wen. =P
It is very interesting...
But Chinese do need more training.
actually,we don not realize it.
ctm的崇洋媚外玩意
I get your website address from Phenix TV （凤凰卫视）, a famous TV station in mainland China
Your blog is so interesting, and your kindly comments for each finding are apreciated.
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