Signs of Bad English - Chinglish
Living many years around the world, outside of correct English spellings, Brent and I have a huge collection of funny stories about the bad English signs we've found. One of our favorites is the many names for "speed bump" we've found including road humps, speed humps, hump in the road, bump in the road, elevated road crossing, and traffic reduction construct.
One of our dear friends, Alex, is living and working in China. He is a Russian who speaks several languages fluently, including English. Brent used to work with him in Israel, and now he is working for the same Israeli company, on loan in China monitoring an Israeli project there.
He loves all things fowl and wicked when it comes to any language, especially English. He's taught us more about how disgusting our language is than we ever wanted to know. So when he got to China and discovered horrid spellings in English on many signs, he started photographing them and sending them to us as jokes. He's amassed quite a collection of his photographs and others he's collected from various friends and places. I thought I'd share some of our favorites with you.
Be warned, when translating, whatever word they find that most closely resembles the translation, they will use, often clueless as to how Americans feel or think about the word. So some of these might be inappropriate for adults. If you don't know the word, ask your child. ;-)
Please do not spit too loud. Thank you.
Intraday Deposit of Asmall Package - claim check.
Bainiarihaohe Seductive Photo - Name of photo shop.
Assembling Dragon Cave - tourist spot.
Amalgamated Pest Control
Prohibit Excretment - No Shit.
No Occupation While Stabilizing - Keep Out if Moving
Notice of Ice Slideway
This sign was at the Chinese ski resort Alex visited. It is called the "Notice of Ice Slideway". It's your basic warning and legal cautions sign.
Ice slideway is an entertainment of update and excitability. For your pleasure and safety, please read the following notice carefully.
1. After buying the ticket, go to ice slideway platform through the stairs on both sides in order with the guidance of workmen; for your safety, please take the basket willingly to avoid slip;
2. Larking during going upstairs and on the platform is forbidden;
3. Please obey arrangement of workmen and stand in a line when waiting on the platform; sit down and ski down, during this period, make sure that your legs are put together and arms are put inwards to avoid the collision with ice edge;
4. Please leave the ice slideway immediately after reaching the bottom to avoid the collission with following tourists;
5. Keep the environmental sanitation; throw litter into specified garbage box.
The summary about cableevay of the Song moutairs ShaoLin
It lies the South west of ShaoLin femple cllish is the famous buddism interest. The all set of machine is produeed from Aastria Dobeimia company. It is the single line action by itself and it contain four person. It about 2860m long (It is the longgest the same kind of cablecvay in our country) and, it is 453m high, single way sent passenger 660p/h, the fastset speed, is 4m/x. The ahde time is 12 minutes. It is the only awy to SanHuangZhai view, Duning your yourney, you can ouatch and engoy the mountain peak in two side. It is chain of mountam. It is all kinds of riew.
If you would like to join us, rubbish will never be homeless.
Cash Recycling Center
Trg to make the senic spot more beautiful
Rctrievable - possibly means recyclable?
on a food package - "Fuck the Material" is one of the ingredients. Look even closer and you will see that "Restore Sugar" is also an ingredient, along with "Fat" and "Starch".
Authors, photographers, teachers, and public speakers, Lorelle and Brent VanFossen, travel extensively with their camera and pen in hand to bring you a variety of articles on nature and travel photography including basic nature photography and the photography business, writing, travel, recreational vehicles, web page design, and life on the road. All images, design, and content are copyrighted and protected by law.
You can find related articles to this topic in our and Telling Stories categories. The previous post is Heading North via The Smoky Mountains and the next post is Bad English Signs. Signs of Bad English - Chinglish, Issue Number 1010, by Lorelle VanFossen, was updated March 26th, 2006.
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October 16, 2006
Hi, this site really cracked me up :)
I am Chinese but living in New Zealand. I read some news saying the Beijing Government is trying to improve the English translation for road signs and stuff like that for the 2008 Olympics. Seems it’s a long way to go.
The meaning of “No Occupation While Stabilizing - Keep Out if Moving” above actually means “Keep out (of the toilet) while (the train) is still at the station”.
Please keep adding more funny stuff. Check the Chinese restaurant menu, you will find dishes like “Government abuse chicken”… lol
September 2, 2007
hehe… now this is hilarious.
I don’t think that it is easy to get where “Aastria Dobeimia” in the “The summary about cableevay of the Song moutairs ShaoLin” comes from.
When reading the sign it becomes clear that some sort of cable car is described here.
Most of the other errors are clearly (1) the result of word-by-word translation, often taking the wrong meaning when more than one is listed in the dictionary, and (2) the result of typos when printing the sign.
“Aastria” should read “Austria” (the counry), and “Dobeimia” (note that this is quoted in the chinese text!) is a phonetic transscription of an austrian surname: “Doppelmayr” - this happens to be the name of an austrian ski lift and cable car vendor (most of the lifts in austria itself and other alpine countries are built by this company) who is very active in new markets like Japan and - obviously - China.
The name was transscripted using chinese characters closely sounding like the syllables of the original.
Of course, when transscripting it back, you do not get the correct spelling…
Funnily enough, in some idioms in Austria the pronunciation of “Doppelmayr” would be quite close to the above ;o)
Speaking of word-by-word translations: “Fuck the material” should be “Dry material” - the chinese character for “to dry” can also mean “to do”, in which sense it can have the same sexual connotation as in english (and also in german, at that).
March 20, 2008
It is just hilarious! I can understand both languages, so I get the fun part. It is bad, but it is fun too. If it is all cleaned up, we will lose another topic for fun…
November 12, 2008
Nowyou better get dressed nude chinese women now. From molly, she.
December 7, 2008
When itis almost young girl fingering completely in existingtracks, summer camp part 6 dreams.
August 8, 2010
…you wrote, “fowl and wicked” - I think you meant “foul and wicked”. A “fowl” is a bird. That’s funny too! ;)