Bad English confounds Beijing teacher

Poor, misleading, or just plain mysterious wording found on many
signsUpdated: 5:49 a.m. ET Jan. 24, 2007

BEIJING - Welcome to China, where the slippery are very crafty, you must receive strangers carefully and the polices warmly warn people not to drive tiredly.

Confused? Amused? Beijing teacher Liu Yongli is simply embarrassed.

He has spent the last three years photographing 1,000 or so examples of poor, misleading or just plain mysterious English used on signs in the Chinese capital and a few other cities.

“English is widely studied in China, but it is remote from daily life,” said Liu, who teaches English at a Beijing university. “A lot of the common English, and that used on signs, does not appear in text books.”

(来源：英语资料下载 http://download.englishcn.com)

He has collected examples of Chinglish signs that range from poor grammar or spelling -- “Please cleaning” and “Volu nteer” -- to the bizarre. (来源：EnglishCN英语问答中心[e问e答])

A favorite of his reads: “To take notice of safe, the slippery are very crafty”. It is actually warning people to take care when using a sloping driveway up to a building. (来源：英语交友 http://friends.englishcn.com)

And another: “On the taxi the guest stands forward”. Liu suggests the simpler “Taxi pick-up point” would probably do. (来源：EnglishCN英语问答中心[e问e答])

One Beijing school even stuck up signs demanding students “Speaking English Only!” (来源：英语学习门户网站EnglishCN.com)

“I think this is a problem of lack of culture, of illiteracy,” Liu, 32, told Reuters. “Signs are supposed to provide convenience. But these ones not only are inconvenient, they cause trouble too.”

(来源：英语资料下载 http://download.englishcn.com)

Rush for Olympic Games
Liu first noticed how bad Beijing’s Chinglish problem was in 2003 when studying for his masters degree. Then he got a camera a year later and started snapping away. Today, he says, he never leaves home without it.

(来源：英语分类信息 http://fl.englishcn.com)

“The government does not pay enough attention to this problem,” he said, sitting in his parents’ apartment in a dreary eastern Beijing suburb as aircraft preparing to land at the nearby international airport droned overhead.

(来源：英语博客 http://space.englishcn.com)

Beijing has set up a body specifically to tackle the problem ahead of the 2008 Olympic Games, but Liu said a national standard was needed.

(来源：英语e问e答 http://ask.englishcn.com)

“The government should publish a standard book that people and departments who make signs can refer to,” he said.

“There’s another laughable problem: China has a national language commission, but it’s only concerned with Chinese and not English,” Liu added.

(来源：英语e问e答 http://ask.englishcn.com)

Liu has attracted considerable local media attention for his campaign, and likes taking reporters to see a large car dealership where the word “exit” has been written “export” throughout, the two words being identical in Chinese.

Other literal translations Liu has spotted are “oil gate” for a gas or petrol station and “business suspended” for closed. (来源：英语麦当劳－英语杂志 EnglishCN.com)

“There is a misunderstanding that you can just use a dictionary, but translation is not like that,” he complained.

(来源：英语图片 http://photo.englishcn.com)

“People often put English on signs for image reasons, because they think English is fashionable,” Liu said. “There are lots of books on English available, but you can’t find one about English signage,” he added. “There’s no model for people to follow.”

Copyright 2007 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. (来源：EnglishCN英语博客基地)

source:Reuters

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