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SUMMER 2012
The wonderful
world of Chinglish
By BRANDON TAYLOR
March 23, 2012
The life abroad is filled with
its inconveniences. Language
barriers, cultural differences and
lack of proper sandwiches make
day-to-day living a bit more arduous than it would be at home. But
this lifestyle does have its little
pleasures.
For me, it’s that wonderful
Chinese interpretation of the
English language — what we
expats call “Chinglish.” It’s basically the result of literal translations of Chinese characters into
English text.
From restaurant menus to city
signs and an array of official documents, Chinglish has played an
integral role in my life in China.
Aside from having a heavy role
in my job at the Beijing Review
– my official title is “editorial
consultant,” but I might as well
be called a Chinglish poacher – it
provides endless amusement to
mundane tasks like ordering food
at lunchtime or waiting in line at
the bank. A walk down the street
provides numerous opportunities
to marvel at the mangling of the
English language on street signs
and storefronts.
While entertaining to foreigners, these grammatical and
typographical faux pas are an
embarrassment to government
officials. In the run up to the 2008
Olympics in Beijing, and prior to
the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai,
China’s top government officials
deployed an army of youngsters
to scour each city, rooting out all
instances of Chinglish to clean up
the two cities’ images and present each as a modern metropolis
entering the global arena. The
results were largely successful, at
least until the Olympics and Expo
were over.
Today, when I go to McDonald’s for a morning coffee, I get a
chuckle walking down the stairs.
A warning sign reads: “Beware of
the stairs. Watch out!”
Examples of Chinglish are many on a typical Beijing restaurant menu. The
chicken dish is really a stew made with free-range chickens. “Explosive
balls” are really just meat balls.
The real fun lies in Beijing’s
thousands of tiny restaurants.
At lunch, my colleagues and
I order one dish based on the
ridiculousness of the translation.
Our favorites include “bacteria
chicken” (chicken coated in bread
crumbs), “a pot farm” (a bowl of
assorted vegetables with bread
rolls), and “palace of explosive
balls” (meatballs in a sweet sauce
with peppers and ginger). It gets
better: I’ve heard of dishes called
“chicken without sex life” and
other names inappropriate for
print publications.
Many of the silly names stem
from mistranslations. For example, “saliva chicken,” called kou
shui ji in Chinese, should actually
be “mouthwatering chicken” – the
characters kou and shui mean
“mouth” and “water,” or drool, but
are used to describe the taste or
sensation of the meal, not the act
of salivating.
Still other dish names are
more than just names or ingredients – they’re meant to tell a story
or hold some kind of cultural significance.
Beijing’s decision-makers
don’t find the menus too amusing – and so they’ve launched yet
another crusade again Chinglish.
Sometime in March, I stumbled
onto a Wall Street Journal article
outlining the government’s efforts
to rid the city of embarrassing
English translations, or mistranslations, in restaurant menus.
The article says that the city has
gone as far as publishing a book
with the proper English names of
some 2,158 Chinese dishes. Restaurants are told to use the book
and make changes to existing or
future menus.
Essentially, they’re trying to
snuff out one of the many intricacies of dining out in China.
But while focusing on cleaning up the city’s image – which
they could easily do by addressing
other issues like pollution and
food safety — these officials are
missing the big picture: foreigners really don’t care about the
mistranslations; they may care if
these translations disappear. If
anything, these translations provide a quick chuckle and may elicit a photo, but they don’t go as far
as tainting China’s image. True,
when I see something like “west
lake fish drunk” I’m not laughing
with the great composer of this
amusing and creative translation,
I’m laughing at them, but it’s all
in good fun. I certainly don’t scoff
and think that this is a reflection
on China’s rise as a prominent
member of the global community.
In all likelihood, the restaurant owners will do what Chinese
do best when presented with an
inconvenient law or campaign:
they ignore it.
Adviser Update