Sunday, September 15, 2013

Chinglish

All throughout China are signs written in very poor English. Most of them are very comicial, some leave you shaking your heads and others you are like what the hell!!

These are a few signs I have seen around time. I could post hundreds more... 

 This is outside one of the few Catholic churches. The fact that you need a sign to inform you about what to do in a church says something in and of it self..
 What water?
 Two random things posted on one.. Watch out your wallet may like to slide?
 hahahaha
 Naked flames???????

My friends and I always get a good chuckle out of them. We think its hilarious that they don't ask a native English speaker to make sure the English is grammatically correct. They always use Google Translate.

Recently I decided to download google translate to read some of the comments the girls have been posting on Wechat. (social app here in china that everyone uses since texting isn't free in China!)

Here are the direct translations of some of them:
-Meow star who is really an amazing animal
-Sister, this ice cream to eat today, let me jump dance white
-Two weeks did not how to cook, and today still vegetarian, shrimp are frozen for nearly one week, do not want to do, too much trouble, but also difficult to handle.

Seriously most of those don't make sense. I had one of my friends who is Chinese read the comments and she said that is what they literally say in Chinese.

Chinese and English are so different. Thats why at first when people learn English its very choppy and doesn't sound good. When they translate from Chinese to English it is just very literally. Only if you have been studying English for a while would you know to add the effects that make English flow.

In Chinese there are no his/her, no ing, no past tense, nothing that really sets are language apart. That is why most of the Chinglish signs are so funny.

Meanwhile the signs get the warning out... though still not quite sure what a naked flame is...

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