Chinglish is not all about poor grammar and misplaced context. This is according to German Oliver Radtke who is now based in Beijing and blogs about his Chinglish love in The Chinglish Files.
I can imagine it was a sad day for Radtke when the Chinese government started a quest to stamp out “embarrassing” Chinglish signs in preparation for the Olympic games.
He has a personal Chinglish favorite: “You can enjoy the fresh air after finishing a civilized urinating.”
“It challenges you as a Westerner to think about why we carefully circumvent certain uses of words. Why are there those conventions? Why is it almost about stigmatizing certain sets of words in public use?”
I find Radtke’s take logical when I think of other famous English fusion languages. Like Singlish. Technically, it is not straight and “ideal” usage of English. Some terms are derived then mixed.
“I chopped this seat for you.” which means “I reserved this seat for you.”
“Make sure ID got chop lor!” which means “Make sure your ID is stamped.”
But then Singlish is made much more famous through Singapore’s positive tourism drive making Singlish an attraction to watch out for.
Can Chinglish achieve the same status? Or will it remain as a source of China jokes by foreigners?
I saw the following sign in front of the girl’s bathroom in Guilin’s airport:
One, I find it cute. [Observe the renovations ongoing at the back--what a rehabilitation!] Two, it’s not really funny, just cute. I also deem it fascinating how the words were translated literally. I guess the cultural thing in Chinglish is you wonder why certain words were used in place of other “more fitting” terms.
I agree, Chinglish is cute. And after all, every country has it’s “glish”. In France, there is “Franglish”. French are 100% confident they speak fluent English when they say they go to the “pressing” (dry cleaner), have a “camping car” (a RV), wear a “smoking” (a tuxedo) etc.
I find there are less and less Chinglish signs in China. I took some pictures during the Olympic Games(http://correresmidestino.com/chinglish/), and there were less than I wish!
LoL, yeah. I have a friend from France who definitely had hilarious Franglish and we loved him for it.
Somehow I can’t agree. There’s a difference between a creole language like Singlish and mistranslation from Chinese to English in these signs. Creole languages are already more or less established within a community – they have defined grammatical structures, rules, native speakers etc. What you’re calling “Chinglish” are simply mistranslations – errors made due to ignorance. They can only seem novel and cute to people with knowledge of standard English. But they can be potentially dangerous when misread especially when used in public signs and notices.
Not that I’m a purist calling for use of “pure” English because there’s no such thing as “pure English”. Each community injects into the language it’s own cultures and traditions. Actual Chinglish, which is not just a misappropriation of an English dictionary to directly translate Chinese but a real combination both language and culture, will probably develop on its own eventually. You might even say that it’s inevitable even if censure from the Chinese govt. exist as long as more and more Chinese learn to use English and become drawn to Western culture (or maybe someday, the world’s lingua franca will be replaced by Chinese and we’ll have a whole new debate about “cute” sounding mispronunciation of Chinese words by non-Chinese people). So I don’t think people like Radtke should worry.
Great comment. I agree.
Chinglish cannot be compared to Singlish. The latter is the day-to-day language of the Singaporeans. Chinese only speak Chinglish to the foreigners.
But then I agree with Zhu that Chinglish, or Singlish and Manglish and Franglish for that matter, can be cute. We don’t need to be always so serious.
I didn’t mean to sound disrespectful when I said “cute”…. I’m a French teacher in English Canada, and I’m used to deal with language mistakes, mispronunciations etc. I also happen to speak a few languages (我会说普通话） and language mistakes are naturally funny for me.
I see your point… but I wouldn’t worry too much if I were you. Most of these signs are obviously translated automatically, hence the weird meanings. But I have never heard anybody speaking English like that in China. Most young Chinese actually spoke pretty good English, I was impressed!
I see these signs as a cross-culture joke. For example, I once saw in the Beijing subway an old woman who wore a teeshirt on which was written “fucker fucker”. It was probably a random “western word” printed here to make it look good, but how funny for me!
But on the other side, clothes with Chinese ideograms printed were quite popular in Europe a few years ago, and I saw some Western wearing clothes with bad words in Chinese — of course, like the Chinese woman in the subway, they had no idea what it meant… it just looked cool! :lol:
I like the cross-culture joke idea. It’s the same here in the Philippines. People love wearing shirts with the words “爱”or some other Chinese-looking term. I guess foreign looks cool.
I guess it all depends on what your attitude is – some people consider it an “abuse” of their language, others just enjoy the interesting usage.
My wife (who is 上海人 and who also speaks English, French and some Japanese) and I (German-English American) both enjoy cross-language puns all the time. One of the things I always enjoyed about Chinese is the ease with which one may make all sorts of outrageous puns, and doing so between multiple languages is even more fun.
I guess one consequence of not having freedom of speech is that your government may enforce such restrictions at any time. It’s one of those little freedoms we take for granted living in the US.
On the other hand, the Brits can say the same thing about us – after all, isn’t an elevator a lift, and a parking lot a car park? Or in Canada, a parkade? etc….
I am sure if I were to write signage in my crappy 汉字, people in Shanghai would probably get the same enjoyment from reading it as my wife and I do with “Chinglish.”
As far as I’m concerned, the first thing that Chinglish represents is a willingness to try. Someone has made an effort with another language and quite frankly, most English people can’t make that claim. Myself included unfortunately. I learnt some very basic Spanish but I never used it much.
But back to Chinglish, sometimes it’s vastly superior to the correct English. My favourite example is this one:
“Tender, fragrant grass. How hard-hearted to trample.”
Now personally, I think that is far more effective than “Keep off the grass”. No-one can claim that “Keep off the grass” sounds beautiful.
Not that Chinglish is appropriate everywhere, in legal documentation for example, you’d have to bring in a professional translation agency. But when no-one’s life or freedom is on the line, I don’t see the problem with Chinglish. Particularly when it’s more eloquent than the “correct” translation.