Beijing, Sep 29 (Xinhua) With the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games less than a year away, the Chinese are waging a war on baffling English translations popularly known as ‘Chinglish’ as part of the capital’s facelift.
A sign warning of a wet floor in a Beijing shopping mall was translated as ‘The Slippery Are Very Crafty’, and a theme park dedicated to China’s ethnic minorities had been called ‘Racist Park’.
“Some of the translations are confusing or even offensive to foreign visitors,” said Chen Lin, a consultant with the Beijing Speaks Foreign Languages Programme. “As Beijing develops to an international hub, we must change this.”
The Beijing municipal government launched a campaign in 2002 to clean up such mis-translations. Chen, a retired language professor at the Beijing Foreign Studies University, is at the helm of the ‘English Police’, enlisted by city officials to correct these bewildering items.
Hotlines have also been set up for citizens who spot an English-language-related mistake on a public sign to call and notify the authorities.
According to Liu Yang, head of the Beijing Speaks Foreign Languages Programme, they have worked out 6,530 pieces of ‘standard’ English translations to substitute the ‘Chinglish’ ones on signs around the city.
“Our goal is to make Beijing free of Chinglish signs by the year end,” Liu said.
Still, one area is very challenging to address – menus.
Chen said deciding how to translate Chinese dishes like ‘Pock-marked Grandma’s Tofu,’ a spicy pork-and-tofu dish named after its creator, is extremely tricky.
“We finally set a principle – translation of the names for dishes should be based on one of four categories: ingredients, cooking method, taste or the name of a person or place,” he said.
While many foreigners living in Beijing welcome the drive, some others regret losing a source of amusement.
“Correcting them is really taking away one of the joys of China,” Oliver Lutz Radtke, a German freelancer who once lived in Shanghai, wrote in his blog (www.chingligh.de) which is dedicated to photographs of “Chinglish” signs.
But Chen doesn’t share this sense of loss.
“We don’t want anyone laughing at us,” he said. “Moreover, our work is aimed to help foreigners. After all, Chinese people don’t need English-language signs.”