The funny side of Chinese Translators
There is a need to have proper Chinese translation carried out by professionals especially when dealing with languages like English and Chinese, as the structure, grammar, phonetics, syntax are oceans apart.
Where the pronunciation is concerned, the Chinese is a tonal language and English is a stress based language. The English as spoken by the Chinese is unintelligible to foreigners because of the stress on the wrong syllable, wrong intonation etc. the same with the English speaker trying to speak Chinese may come out with the wrong meaning altogether.
There are so much of Chinese people who know English and Chinese and think in English and speak or write in Chinese. This has resulted in the evolving of ‘Chinglish’, which is Chinese mixed with erroneous English expressions by mostly beginners and students. Chinglish has proved to be a problem for Chinese companies trying to market their products worldwide mostly in English-speaking countries. The product label does not make sense and is sometimes humorous, well it’s mostly humorous and the exact idea is not communicated to the user, which could pose a huge problem and mislead customers resulting in lawsuits.
Other than pronunciation difficulties in Chinese Translation, erroneous vocabulary also leads to Chinglish. Words like see watch or read all have a single Chinese equivalent. Expressions like ‘say a language’ instead of ‘read a language’ or ‘look a movie’ instead of ‘watch a movie’ are all common mistakes and humorous mistakes that are being made.
Another problem a Chinese learning English faces is the grammar. Some examples are using ‘me is’ instead of ‘I am’ or excessive use of ‘ing’ like ‘noising’ or saying, Chinese are likely to say ‘quality bad’ instead of ‘bad quality’.
“Please would paper chuck in waste bin, thank you”
“Pull in enter”
‘Site of Jumping Umbrella’
‘Please Drive Correctly’
‘Rubbish Receptacle’
This is not intended at offending the Chinese but to give them some food for thought.
About the Author
THE MARKETING ANALYSTS provides Chinese Translation and Certified Chinese Translation services.