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!
a piece of chinglish hidden on today’s chinese lesson. can you see it? :P
sunday. we enter the elevator with some kids and their parents. the kids (2 boys of around 7) are giggling and mutter “waiguo ren” (foreigners).
they’re talking about us, so i gently correct him and say “putaoya ren” which means portuguese. (and also that we can understand him :P).
he laughs, a bit shy, and conspires with his friend and parents which urge him to speak to us, and then he says “how do you do?”, in english. i say “fine, thank you, and you?”, “just so-so”, he replies and then they leave the elevator.
“just so-so” is the translation of “mama huhu”, the typical answer for a “nihao ma?” (how are you?). the chinese will not usually say they are good, or very good, or any other extreme feelings, and rather settle for a moderate answer.
they are just so-so. it’s a funny detail.
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. :|