chinese + english = chinglish

According to this NYT article, Shanghai is making an effort to eliminate "Chinglish" from its signage. The article includes a helpful slideshow that demonstrates the dangers of incorrect signage...but also examples of bewildering translations, such as "Jew's ear juice." No, the Chinese are not running around lopping off the ears of Jewish people. Just an inexplicably bad translation. Hei mu er (what they're referring to here as "Jew's ear") is a type of herb, I think. The literal translation is "black wood ear"...I have no idea what it is in English, b/c I don't think it's used much in cooking in the US, if at all.

So there are differing feelings about Chinglish. Foreigners/tourists tend to find it very perplexing and funny. Some Chinese people do too, but there are also feelings of humiliation. I think it is a lot to expect another country to put up signs in perfect English--we generally don't have signs up in any other languages, except for the odd Spanish here and there. (My office building has signs in Polish, which is interesting. I can't tell you if they're correct or not, but there they are.)

While I understand Shanghai's effort to eradicate their mistranslated signs, I do think that there is unique culture here. It does give a glimpse as to how the Chinese language/culture works. And also, they're trying! I have a huge soft spot for people who at least try to take on another language. My Chinese is kind of getting iffy, so I speak a form of Chinglish that is more mangled on the Chinese side than I'd like, but I try really, really hard!

And the lost-in-translation thing isn't just in other countries--the US certainly has its share of gaffes when it comes to other languages. I'm willing to bet that there are thousands of Americans walking around in the US with "Chinese" characters tattooed on their bodies and no clear idea if it is actually a real Chinese character or not. Or T-shirts with other languages printed on it...yeah, it's cool to have Swahili on your shirt if no one else around you can read it, but do you really know what it says? A girl in my high school class had a lovely shirt that had "Self-Automated Car Parking" written on it in Chinese. And Six Flags in VA has an Asian-themed restaurant where they stenciled Chinese characters on the wall...except most were sideways, upside-down, flipped in reverse, or just plain wrong. Maybe you can call that ignorant, but it's also kind of funny, kind of human. They get points for trying right?

I guess what I'm trying to say is, mistranslation is something that everyone does, and people shouldn't be belittled for it when it does. Literal meaning might lost through translation, but I think a lot of cultural understanding can be found, too. Which is why I think my relatives can cut me some slack when I make a mess of their language...I'm trying, I really am!