Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Thanks for the fox.

This morning I had an hour-long interview with the news people from sohu.com at their headquarters in Zhongguancun.

Many thanks, 廖恒 and crew, for taking such an interest in this matter!

Here is the webcast interview (in Chinese):
德国朋友建网上博物馆保存中国式英语 part 1

德国朋友建网上博物馆保存中国式英语 part 2

And the transcript (in Chinese):
外国人如何看待中国式英语

Another great thing about coming to sohu.com is: after all the talking you get to bring a new friend home!

In the spirit of this website, what could his or her name be? Open for suggestions...

Saturday, July 12, 2008

I try my best.



Without a Chinese original, it's quite a challenge to reconstruct what the owner was actually referring to. Wondering about the Chinese original, I came up with these two possible candidates:

"一个感受茶道的新地方" or "一个感受新茶道的地方"。

Regarding feel gan3shou4 感受 take a look at the previous posting Synonyms are trouble.

Found next to Beijing's Drum Tower gu3lou2 鼓楼.

Friday, July 11, 2008

Pretty lost in translation in this hospital.



Tricky one at first, makes sense if you know that mistakes like these result from a rather obvious lack of sensitivity for the various shapes of Latin characters. The mixup of "d" and "p" or "D" and "G" are classic examples.

First line is a "green first-aid passage".
The hospital is obviously operating on a color system.

The second one reads
"Administrative offices of all inpatient departments."
The only thing I don't get is the "oeira" at the end of this line.

Shot in a hospital in 成都 Chengdu. Many thanks, Christoph!