“你笑也罷叫也罷，Chinglish就在我們的身邊。”這是一位老外朋友在中國發(fā)表的感慨。
下面就是在他眼里的Chinglish，是不是就在你的身邊呢？
Whether it makes you laugh, moan or cry, Chinglish is an everyday part of our lives.
"Please drink our red and shite wines"
- western-managed cafe, Huaihai Rd, Shanghai.
"It is forbidden to urinate or shit in the park" (禁止在公園內(nèi)隨地大小便。)
- official Shanghai municipal parks list of do's and dont's
(注：誰會那么老遠從國外跑來這里干這事？通常做這種事的人連中文都看不懂，不要說英文了。我個人認為，不要張貼這種文字，真地有礙觀瞻。還有衛(wèi)生間總標著toilet，難怪他們找不到正確的地方。)
"Little grass is smiling slightly, Please walk on pavement."
- sign in a beijing park
My personal favourite is Beihai parks 'For your own safety, please don't climb the rocketry' - don't know if it's still there though, that was 1999. (為了你的安全請勿攀登)
"big wine store"
well, you can't find beer or hard liquor there and it isn't funny until you realized that what you're seeing is a hotel (da zhou dian - 大酒店)!
"big rice store"
a word by word direct translation of da fan dian (大飯店)
- both examples were found in hangzhou.
On a menu in a Wuhan Hotel I found following dish: "Lobster assassinated by Australian"!! It was apparantly literaly translated from the Chinese and was actually "Sashimi from Australian Lobster", where the word "Sashimi" in Chinese is actually something like "Pierce Body" (assassinate).
Another delish on the menu was the "Three Language Fish" literally from "Sanwenyu" = "Salmon" (注：三文魚 huh??? 我現(xiàn)在終于知道三文魚為什么那么貴了，會說三種語言的魚能不貴么？ )
a big blue sign advertises: "Fuck Vegetables"
-- the chinese version says 'dried packed vegetables' (實在不知道是什么菜 :-( )
In the Shugo Grocery Store in Jiangyan: Your need! Our Greed!
1. Sign on a bar toilet door in Chengdu: "Just Piss. Please."
2. A Chinese friend asked me to bring him back some "potato mud" from KFC. (番茄醬 huh???)
Don't forget to carry your thing. (不要忘記您的東西)
- Found this in a taxi van in Shanghai.
For those of you who speak German.
I found a sign on the garage of a Guangzhou Volkswagen dealer, saying: "VOLKSMAGEN Service"
("Volkswagen" means "People's Cars". "Volksmagen" would mean: "People's Stomachs") － (Volksmagen 大眾)
Found this one in Leshan near the Giant Buddha:
"Pay attention to safety! Nice to live." (平安幸福???)
TO TAKE NOTICE OF SAFE
THE SLIPPERY ARE VERY CRAFTY (注意安全謹防上當???)
On a slope, at the entrance to the mall opposite Bejing Railway station, near the Irish pub. The picture of the sign won my mum a web cam in a competition in the UK.
Okay, this wasn't really in China, but it's Chinglish nonetheless. I got it from a Chopsticks wrapper at a Chinese restaurant...note the random capitalizaion, punctuation, and non-words. I have a scan of it if anybody's interested...
"Welcome to Chinese Restaurant. Please try your Nice Chinese Food With Chopsticks the traditional and typical of Chinese glonous history and cultual.
This one is in fact spoken, not written... I once worked at a Chinese restaurant in Canada that employed waiters and cooks from all over China. As they passed each other in the kitchen the waiters would say "I kill me!"
They were saying "excuse me"!
It seems that some of the new waiters who were just learning English would pronounce "excuse me" like "a kyu mi," and the waiters who had better English recognized that it sounded like "I kill me," which they found very funny. Rather than try to correct the "a kyu mi" they opted to turn it into a joke. So we had an entire restaurant full of waiters running around saying "I kill me" every few minutes.
At a restaurant on a universtity campus, on the menu was COCK COLA. any one wanna try?
At a supermarket in Zibo, Shandong Province, there was a big sign over the exit that said "Thank You For Patronizing". I laughed all year at that one. (歡迎光臨???)
Nanchang airport's cafe' now serves a coffee and cack (a slang term for, er, manure), I haven't eaten any of it but the translation may be a foreigners revenge after they did.