Shanghai Is Trying to Untangle the Mangled English of Chinglish

Jackson Lowen for The New York Times

Shanghai has been trying to harness English translations that sometimes wander, like “cash recyling machine.” More Photos »

By ANDREW JACOBS

Published: May 2, 2010

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SHANGHAI — For English speakers with subpar Chinese skills, daily life in Chinaoffers a confounding array of choices. At banks, there are machines for“cash withdrawing” and “cash recycling.” The menus of local restaurantsmight present such delectables as “fried enema,” “monolithic treemushroom stem squid” and a mysterious thirst-quencher known as “TheJew’s Ear Juice.”

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A Sampling of Chinglish

Those who have had a bit too much monolithic treemushroom stem squid could find themselves requiring roomier attire:extra-large sizes sometimes come in “fatso” or “lard bucket” categories.These and other fashions can be had at the clothing chain known asScat.

Go ahead and snicker, although by last Saturday’s opening of the Expo 2010in Shanghai, drawing more than 70 million visitors over its six-monthrun, these and other uniquely Chinese maladaptations of the Englishlanguage were supposed to have been largely excised.

Well, that at least is what the Shanghai Commissionfor the Management of Language Use has been trying to accomplish duringthe past two years.

Fortified by an army of 600 volunteers and apolitburo of adroit English speakers, the commission has fixed more than10,000 public signs (farewell “Teliot” and “urine district”), rewrittenEnglish-language historical placards and helped hundreds of restaurantsrecast offerings.

The campaign is partly modeled on Beijing’sherculean effort to clean up English signage for the 2008 SummerOlympics, which led to the replacement of 400,000 street signs, 1,300restaurant menus and such exemplars of impropriety as the Dongda AnusHospital — now known as the Dongda Proctology Hospital. Gone, too, isRacist Park, a cultural attraction that has since been rechristenedMinorities Park.

“The purpose of signage is to be useful, not to beamusing,” said Zhao Huimin, the former Chinese deputy consul general tothe United States who, as director general of the capital’s ForeignAffairs Office, has been leading the fight for linguisticstandardization and sobriety.

But while the war on mangled English may beconsidered a signature achievement of government officials, aficionadosof what is known as Chinglish are wringing their hands in despair.

Oliver Lutz Radtke,a former German radio reporter who may well be the world’s foremostauthority on Chinglish, said he believed that China should embrace thefanciful melding of English and Chinese as the hallmark of a dynamic,living language. As he sees it, Chinglish is an endangered species thatdeserves preservation.

“If you standardize all these signs, you not onlytake away the little giggle you get while strolling in the park but youlose a window into the Chinese mind,” said Mr. Radtke, who is the authorof a pair of picture books that feature giggle-worthy Chinglish signsin their natural habitat.

Lest anyone think it is all about laughs, Mr. Radtkeis currently pursuing a doctoral degree in Chinglish at the Universityof Heidelberg.

Still, the enemies of Chinglish say the laughter itelicits is humiliating. Wang Xiaoming, an English scholar at the ChineseAcademy of Social Sciences, painfully recalls the guffaws that eruptedamong her foreign-born colleagues as they flipped through a photographiccollection of poorly written signs. “They didn’t mean to insult me but Icouldn’t help but feel uncomfortable,” said Ms. Wang, who has sincebecome one of Beijing’s leading Chinglish slayers.

Those who study the roots of Chinglish say manyexamples can be traced to laziness and a flawed but wildly populartranslation software. Victor H. Mair,a professor of Chinese at the University of Pennsylvania, said thecomputerized dictionary, Jinshan Ciba, had led to sexually orientedvulgarities identifying dried produce in Chinese supermarkets and theregrettable “fried enema” menu selection that should have been renderedas “fried sausage.”

Although improved translation software and a growingzeal for grammatically unassailable English has slowed the output ofnew Chinglishisms, Mr. Mair said he still received about five newexamples a day from people who knew he was good at deciphering what wentwrong. “If someone would pay me to do it, I’d spend my life studyingthese things,” he said.

Among those getting paid to wrestle with Chinglish is Jeffrey Yao, an English translator and teacher at the Graduate Institute of Interpretation and Translationat Shanghai International Studies University who is leading the signexorcism. But even as he eradicates the most egregious examples bygovernment fiat — businesses dare not ignore the commission’s suggestedfixes — he has mixed feelings, noting that although some Chinglishphrases sound awkward to Western ears, they can be refreshingly lyrical.“Some of it tends to be expressive, even elegant,” he said, shufflingthrough an online catalog of signs that were submitted by the volunteerswho prowled Shanghai with digital cameras. “They provide a window intohow we Chinese think about language.”

He offered the following example: While park signsin the West exhort people to “Keep Off the Grass,” Chinese versions tendto anthropomorphize nature as a way to gently engage the stompingmasses. Hence, such admonishments as “The Little Grass Is Sleeping.Please Don’t Disturb It” or “Don’t Hurt Me. I Am Afraid of Pain.”

Mr. Yao read off the Chinese equivalents as ifsavoring a Shakespearean sonnet. “How lovely,” he said with a sigh.

He pointed out that this linguistic mentality helpedcreate such expressions as “long time no see,” a word-for-wordtranslation of a Chinese expression that became a mainstay of spokenEnglish. But Mr. Yao, who spent nearly two decades working as atranslator in Canada, has his limits. He showed a sign from a parkdesigned to provide visitors with the rules for entry, which includeprohibitions on washing, “scavenging,” clothes drying and publicdefecation, all of it rendered in unintelligible — and in the case ofthe last item — rather salty English. The sign ended with thishumdinger: “Because if the tourist does not obey the staff to manage orcontrary holds, Does, all consequences are proud.”

Even though he had had the sign corrected recently,Mr. Yao could not help but shake his head in disgust at the memory. Andhe was irritated to find that a raft of troublesome sign verbiage hadslipped past the commission as the expo approached, including acafeteria sign that read, “The tableware reclaims a place.”(Translation: drop off dirty dishes here.)

“Some Chinglish expressions are nice, but we are nottranslating literature here,” he said. “I want to see people noddingthat they understand the message on these signs. I don’t want to seethem laughing.”

Li Bibo contributed research.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: May 7, 2010

Anarticle on Monday about an effort in China to excise Chinesemaladaptations of the English language in translated signs, placards,menus and other written materials misidentified a Chinese diplomaticposition in the United States formerly held by Zhao Huimin, now thedirector general of Beijing’s Foreign Affairs Office, who has beenhelping to lead that effort. He was a deputy consul general, notambassador. The article also rendered incorrectly the transliteratedname of a flawed but popular computerized Chinese dictionary that somelinguists consider a source of the Chinglish problem. It is the JinshanCiba, not Jingshan Ciba.

A version of this article appeared in print on May 3, 2010, on page A12 of the New York edition.