Same Sky Magazine

Culturally Sensitive Chinglish

I admit that I usually get a good giggle out of photographs of so-called “Chinglish” or “Japlish” signs: those curiously-translated instructions that sound almost lyrical instead of comprehensible. But I usually get a dose of guilt along with the laugh. Who are we to laugh at an attempt from a Chinese or Japanese speaker to helpfully translate a sign into English, when we rarely go around translating our signs into their languages? In fact, we should be eternally grateful to any country that uses a foreign script and does us the service of making it someway legible.

Chinglish: Found in Translation

Enough of my rant, it’s just a preamble to why I particularly like Oliver Lutz Radke’s book Chinglish: Found in Translation, and the accompanying blog The Chinglish Files. Radke isn’t just some tourist who snapped a bunch of funny photos, but he reads and speaks Chinese fluently so he can give a literal translation and explain how the Chinglish phrase emerged - and he even politely suggests more suitable translations. (What impresses me one step further is that he’s written books in German - and is German, as you’d guess from the name - but is still able to do all of this in English as well. A real multilinguist).

Let me give an example: today the Chinglish Files blog has a post about the coming Beijing Olympics and a website that urges us to Contact the Olympics. Okay, it’s not as hilarious as some of the other mistranslations, but Radke gives it some thought and explanation from a Chinese language point of view - two words with more or less the same meaning - and suggests what they’re really trying to say is we should “Feel the Olympics” - a slightly catchier slogan.

It’s All the Beginning of International English

Chinglish goes one step further than funny signs. At some stage these grammatically not-quite-right or contextually unusual English phrases start to be taken as “real English” by local populations - and even used by native speakers, just wait for my post on sharehouse owners and sharemates - and sooner or later, it becomes part of a new language - International English. Depending on whose stats you trust, you could say there are now almost two billion people in the world who speak English, but only 20% of them are native speakers. When I taught Business English in Europe, most of my students needed English to converse with people from other countries, but not native English speakers. So English is changing (or being mangled, depending on your point of view) by all these extra speakers. That used to bother me, but now I just find it fascinating.

Don’t Toll a Temple Bell

PS: That’s my picture up there. It’s actually from Japan, so really it’s Japlish. And just for the record, I didn’t toll a temple bell at that particular temple, but I did elsewhere (only in places without such signs). But strictly speaking I disobeyed this sign’s instruction. Sorry.