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By John E. CareyJanuary 7, 2007
Just this last week, The People's Daily, arguably the most well regarded and professional of China's Communist news outlets; ran a story about the American defense establishment. Within that story, the writer referred to "Rockheed Martin" several times.
The letter "R" can replace the letter "L" in the Chinese mind (and mouth).
A Thai friend recently recommend I add some tropical fish in a nice aquarium to our home.
"Fish very good for ruck."
Say that again?
"Fish are rucky! Good for your Feng shui!"
Oh. We are now certainly talking about "lucky" not "rucky." I get this because Feng Shui (pronounced "fung shway") is the ancient Chinese practice of appropriate placement and arrangement of objects, space, and other things to achieve harmony with the environment. The literal translation is "wind and water."
"You need wind and water in your home."
I should have seen that coming.
Hurricane Katrina survivors may not agree with this Asian interpretation of what a proper home truly needs.
I bought a wind chime with a tiny sculpted fish in the center. I told my Thai friend that when I could afford to let a little wind into the house the chimes would ring out the "good rucky."
That seemed to solve my Feng Shui problem for at least today while he thinks that over.
Now I don't want people calling me a racist, an insensitive and intolerant chauvinist or anything else. I just wanted to point out before you read the next article entitled, "Rough translations leave China red-faced," that it is sometimes quite trying trying to figure out the complexities of our various universes.
And I don't want any criticism likening me to Rosie O'Donnell who recently imitated an apparently drunk Danny DeVito by doing a phony Chinese speech pattern as she made fun of her former guest. Part of Rosie's rant included the "words" "ching chong."
O'Donnell's racist slur made international headlines.
Oops.
And if you don't believe me that Rosie's remarks were racist and offensive to many Asians; don't believe me. But that is what thousnads called Rosie's words in thousands of letters to the editor, according to the several editors we spoke to.
American citizens wrote to many city dailies to proclaim they were offended by Rosie's remark, including one David Kichi who wrote to the "Asian Times," "It isn't bad enough Shaquille O'Neal and Adam Carolla also used those terms ignorantly, but to hear Rosie O'Donnell. We need to make her see that using 'ching chong' to relate to the Chinese is the same as using the "N" word to relate to blacks."
Yikes. Rosie commits the Asian "macaca" and almost gets away with it because most Asians are so cautious about doling out criticism.
And I have even overheard Asian customers asking a waiter, "How you cook the crap today?"
The waiter had a heart attack. The menu said "carp."
Finally, my wife is Vietnamese by birth and a proud American citizen by choice.
Some have told me the concept of "tense" or time and space in Vietnamese verbs is different from ours. So I face the cultural and linguistic abyss each and every day. I never know if "I go to store" means "going to the store later," "been to the store already," or "I am in the store."
I may be wrong about this but if any Vietnamese linguists feel rucky and not too tense maybe they can instruct me on tense in Vietnamese verbs. They should send me an email to help me out (or just offer us a funny story of the mistakes made because of errors in language or cultural misinterpretation).
No offense to anyone intended or implied. And I love my wife very much. And I admire and cherish all my wonderful Asian and Asian-American friends and relatives. So please don't liken me to Rosie. I couldn't bear being the enemy of Mr. Rump.
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Rough Translations Leave China Red-Faced
Embarrassing or rude misinterpretations of words into English lead officials to take action.
Cox News Service
January 7, 2007
"The Slippery Are Very Crafty."
translation of a sign warning of a wet floor in a Beijing shopping center
BEIJING
Visitors to China's capital can stroll through "Racist Park," enjoy a plate of "Crap in the Grass" and stop by a Starbucks for a cup for "Christmas Bland" coffee.
Now the Beijing government is trying to clean up such mistranslations and sloppy editing (including the inversion of 'a' and 'r' in carp on menus) before an expected 500,000 foreigners arrive for the 2008 Summer Olympics.
"Some of the translations in China aren't clear or even polite," said Liu Yang, director general of the Beijing Speaks Foreign Languages program. "The government realized that if they weren't changed, the city would lose face."
The campaign includes teaching 300 English phrases to 48,000 taxi drivers, helping private restaurants edit menus and standardizing public signs.
The English translations on signage range from charming mistakes to baffling renditions that spread anger and confusion.
A sign warning of a wet floor in a Beijing shopping center was recently translated as "The Slippery Are Very Crafty."
In Shanghai, which will host several Olympic soccer games, at least one public toilet equipped for use by people with disabilities is emblazoned with the malapropism, "Deformed Man Toilet."
The fact that hundreds of thousands of English speakers will descend on China for the Olympics prompted a government-led campaign reminiscent of mass mobilizations of the 1960s and '70s.
In Beijing, several district governments offer citizens free English classes with the goal of boosting the number of foreign-language speakers from today's 3.2 million to 5 million by 2008, when they will be called on to help the city "host a most excellent ever Olympic Games," according to a poorly edited English version of Beijing's "Plan of Action for the Beijing Speaks Foreign Languages Program."
The city has also vowed to make menus comprehensible to English speakers and is compiling a standardized name list for more than 1,000 dishes, the China Daily reported last month.
"For a foreigner, eating in a Chinese restaurant can be daunting especially when you have a choice of dishes on the English menu ranging from 'Swallowing, " the newspaper stated, "'the Clouds' to 'Hot Crap.'"
Director Liu said that deciding how to translate Chinese entrees such as "Pockmarked Grandma Chen's Tofu," a spicy pork-and-tofu dish named after its creator, can be tricky.
"For some dishes we'll just have to explain what's in them and keep the original name," he said.
"Racist Park," the English name given to a theme park extolling China's minority cultures, on the other hand, was obviously a bad translation, Liu said, adding that an over-reliance on the dictionary can lead to the incorrect choice of synonyms and that the park would be renamed.
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