I recently read in the paper that there’s a growing movement amongst Chinese university students to try and eradicate the widespread mistranslation of Chinese signs into English.
It’s understandable but a shame as outside of important safety notices (such as “Slip Carefully”, which usually have an explanatory picture anyway), it really doesn’t do a great deal of harm and we’d miss out on the moments of levity brought about by signs such as:
Sign at a Garden with a Curved Pond
Some, like the above, you have to wonder if the translator was in on the joke, but many signs are just not easily translatable due to the poetic nature of Chinese.
Of course you can always use Google Translate, but technology has its limitations:
The Chinese section is restaurant, or dining hall.
Undoubtably the joke goes both ways – no doubt my attempts at Chinese often results in horrible embarrassment, but people are too polite to tell me.
I remember when visiting a family in France once, that on being asked what I’d like for breakfast on a daily basis I pointed at the Corn Flakes and said ‘seulement un petit peu’ which literally translates as ‘only a little bit’. On the very last day they explained that was a common French euphemism, so I’d been asking for ‘Just some penis’ for breakfast please.
In my defense, there is a large cock on the box:
