‘Chinglish’ website targets Asians lost in mistranslation<\/p>\n
by Clifford Coonan in Beijing<\/p>\n
CHINA: Rich parents in the United States are desperately seeking
\nChinese nannies to tutor their charges in Mandarin, the language of the
\nfuture for westerners keen to make inroads in China. Meanwhile, in
\nChina, 300 million people are learning English, the language of their
\nfuture.<\/p>\n
Both tongues are de rigueur among the aspiring middle classes in their
\nrespective linguistic catchment areas, but both languages are also
\nnotoriously difficult to learn.<\/p>\n
Betwixt these two heavy burdens of linguistic expectations steps
\nchinglish.com – http:\/\/www.chinglish.com – an online service that translates
\nfrom Chinese into English and back again.<\/p>\n
“Chinglish.com sees its mission in facilitating communication between
\nspeakers of Chinese and English. As far as we are concerned,
\ninternational organisations will only have two official languages of
\nwork in the future: Chinese and English. Our portal can save billions of
\ndollars in translation and interpretation costs,” said Marius van
\nBergen, chief executive of the Chinglish website, which launched this
\nweek.<\/p>\n
“Chinglish’s mission is to promote linguistic and cultural exchange
\nbetween China and the West by creating a virtual internet community in
\nwhich Chinese and English coexist and enrich each other,” Mr van Bergen
\nsaid in a statement.<\/p>\n
Chinglish is a word that means a sort of Chinese-English pidgin. It is
\nso widespread in Asia that it effectively functions as a creole
\nlanguage, but sometimes it does look funny on signposts.<\/p>\n
A personal favourite is “F**k the certain price of goods” instead of
\n“Sale Now On”, while “Children is not recommended” also rings true.
\n“Enter the mouth”, a mistranslation of the Chinese characters for
\n“Entrance” is also very common on signposts, causing blushes.<\/p>\n
The Chinese government is running a major drive to standardise the use
\nof English on public signs before the Beijing Olympics in 2008. A group
\ncalled the “Beijing Speaks to the World Committee” is scouring the
\ncapital looking for signs lost in mistranslation. For instance,
\nBeijing’s Park of Ethnic Minorities was signposted, hilariously, as
\n“Racist Park”. But not for long. (Fulltext from The Irish Times – Nov 3, 2006)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
‘Chinglish’ website targets Asians lost in mistranslation by Clifford Coonan in Beijing CHINA: Rich parents in the United States are desperately seeking Chinese nannies to tutor their charges in Mandarin, the language of the future for westerners keen to make inroads in China. Meanwhile, in China, 300 million people are learning English, the language of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":377,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-readings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/377"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":771,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104\/revisions\/771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/chinese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}