Title: More Chinglish: Speaking in Tongues
Editor: Oliver Lutz Radtke
Publication Year: 2009
Publisher: Gibbs Smith
Pages: 111
A friend of mine gave me this cute little book (a sequel of sorts to Chinglish: Found in Translation), and I love it. Everyone who has traveled in Asia is familiar with the strange English found in the unlikeliest of public places – as is probably everyone familiar with the internet at large. The internet fad started with Engrish (popularized by a website of the same name), the Japanese version of creatively mutilated English, but Japan is far from the only Asian country to push the boundaries of what the English language can do.
Radtke has collected a number of examples of so-called “Chinese English” found on menus (Fried special wikipedia; Onion explodes the distant senate), public service announcements (If you are stolen, call the police at once; No Throws the thing), signs encouraging tourists to be respectful of nature (Our life will be ceased if you step hard; PLEASE NOT DRAMA WATER), and product placement (twin in good’re you won ohinwhllo do juce jias). His book is prefaced by a short introductory essay describing the position of David Tool on Chinglish as a valuable cultural artifact. Also included is a short dialog between Radtke and Victor Mair, who explains the origins and academic appeal of Chinglish.
I agree with all parties involved that Chinglish is linguistically fascinating, and I enjoyed flipping through this collection and trying to puzzle out what in the world was going on with each bit of text. Also, as Professor Mair points out, the disconnect between the intended and actual meaning of these expressions is often silly to the point of hilarity. I’d like to conclude with my own favorite bit of Engrish, taken from the side of a gift bag sold in the Lawson convenience stores ubiquitous in Japan:
I forgot to add that there is plenty of strange English in America as well:
http://imgur.com/EeEZP
Public elementary school visits are a treat because of all the Engrish t-shirts the kids wear. “University of Missouri, Ste. Genevieve. French Immigrants” was disturbing because it nearly made sense. The weirdest trend in Engrish shirts is the mock US college shirt, but with the addition of weird phrases about immigrants or bears.
Another one: “United States of Amerika.” Back: “1788. Oh say can you see by the dawn’s early light. The land of the free and the home of the brave?” Nice use of the question mark there.
The weirdest thing is that no one has any idea what it says. I have trouble imagining how picking an all-text shirt you can’t read happens, because they aren’t really aesthetically pleasing in the same way one with a picture is.
I… I actually own several pseudo-collegiate long-sleeved shirts from Japan that make absolutely no sense. I love them, because the layout and the typeface are cool. Who cares if they’re completely incomprehensible? I mean, you have to admit, kanji look pretty cool too, and I’m convinced that probably most Japanese people can’t read a lot of the calligraphic fonts(?) you see here and there in Japan. And then of course there are always the Americans who get tattoos of characters like 黙, thinking that they mean “tranquility” or something….
There’s more than one way to express meaning and I think we see a lot of that in Chinglish. I can’t say I know much about the language but I’m guessing that the Chinese languages expresses meaning differently and that can sound a little awkward when translated.
My favourite example is this:
“Tender, fragrant grass. How hard-hearted to trample”.
It isn’t as though that doesn’t make sense. I actually think it makes perfect sense, it’s just expressed differently to how a native English speaker would do it. And as a native English speaker, I actually think it’s quite beautiful and much superior to “keep off the grass”.
That said, this kind of thing musn’t crop up in business documentation or anything like that and in those situations, I’d hope that a professional translation agency was being used anyway. But otherwise, Chinglish isn’t all gibberish. Sometimes it is but not always.
Thank you so much for your comment! I agree that Chinglish isn’t all gibberish. Professor Mair actually teaches a course on “Script and Society in China” at the University of Pennsylvania, and he goes through a unit on the origination and linguistics of Chinglish. I think I may have linked to it above, but it’s worth mentioning that he posts all sorts of interesting stuff about the grammar of Chinglish over on Language Log…
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?author=13
But, as you say, sometimes it is total gibberish, although I totally agree that at other times it makes perfect sense – and is even a little poetic.
If the professional translation agency you’re linking to is your own, it might be worth contacting Professor Mair or Oliver Lutz Radtke directly. I understand that there is a bit of political maneuvering at play regarding English translation in China, but the two of them might be able to help you break into the market…