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2006-07-18 23:40:55 · 11 answers · asked by barton_richard 2 in Travel ➔ Asia Pacific ➔ China
It called Chinglish and happens because they translate by each individual word rather than the meanings.
For example Walk slowly in Chinese is actually there way of saying have a safe journey home and slowly eat means to enjoy your lunch. If you translate things by there words rather than by meanings that when things begin to sound funny. LOL
Like one of there swear words means go lay an egg or something which makes no senses at all.
Dan
2006-07-20 05:13:27 · answer #1 · answered by Danny B 1 · 2⤊ 1⤋
The Chinese written on that sign means "Construction Work is in progress, we apologise for any inconvenience caused" ... Yes, funny ... but it is better than just put a chinese sign there, at least you can guess the meaning and laugh at it. You actually can find a lot of funny (bilingual) signs / notices in Asia.
Any airport in western countries would dare to post chinese notices on the temporary hoardings? Then we may ask why the English / French / German / Italian / etc signs so funny when written in Chinese!
2006-07-19 14:54:44 · answer #2 · answered by Aileen HK 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
That is the problem of direct translations.
People who are not familar with the language will usually do that. I once heard my Indonesian Lecturer said, to learn a language, one need to learn their culture first.
When you can laugh at the jokes on the TV programme, you are ok.
2006-07-23 00:07:24 · answer #3 · answered by Melvin C 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
In Beijing they call it Chinglish and it's actually kind of funny. Even in CCTV the state owned television they misspell words :-)
2006-07-19 09:04:35 · answer #4 · answered by andilindenblatt 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
because they do not know english, and so they use a translator and sometimes the words come out oddly
2006-07-19 15:59:09 · answer #5 · answered by mcstennis09 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Because they often try to translate it right from Chinese, or they misspell something.
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2006-07-19 09:25:11 · answer #6 · answered by mike i 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
because that is the way chinese is translated into english. their grammar structure causes the translation to be different from our grammar structure............
2006-07-22 09:02:30 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Why are people with Chinese character/Kanji tatoos so lame????
2006-07-19 06:44:27 · answer #8 · answered by angrysandwichguy2006 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Its called Engrish!! Have a look at www.engrish.com
2006-07-19 06:43:41 · answer #9 · answered by OriginalBubble 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
b/c the literally translate them over...and it's in broken english and what not.
2006-07-19 15:09:17 · answer #10 · answered by ME 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋