chinese wisdom, from suzhou. i thought that chinglish would probably be a “language” soon to be extinct, as the dictionaries and automatic translators got better. but after almost 2 years of living here, i don’t think that’s the case. chinglish is alive and well, omnipresent in every restaurant menu, advertising banner, school book, product description… sometimes it’s funny, sometimes cryptic, sometimes technically correct but not so polite… but definitely here to stay!
… nor grammar! :D
a piece of chinglish hidden on today’s chinese lesson. can you see it? :P
the chinglish translations are everywhere in china, naturally. they’re so ridiculous that they never fail to bring a smile to my face. the best sign from our building looks like this* :
and the tagline reads “when in fire, please don’t use lift”. we’ll try to remember that next time we are… hum… in fire.
running-up to the pole position is also: “during the elevator is maintained, passengers should go up and down the emergency stairs.” sounds like fun! :)
* sorry for the bad quality of the drawing.
Engrish is a pejorative or humorous slang term which refers to poor-quality attempts by Japanese writers to create English words and phrases, whether in mistranslation of original Japanese text, or in an attempt to create original text in the English language.
(from wikipedia)
my example is from bangladesh, from a can of custard powder (which made an excellent dessert, by the way).
on the bottom of the same can, there’s another notice, pointing out that breastfeeding is the best for babies. :|