Grammar Police in China on Bad Engrish

It tastes like money.

The task of translation is never an easy task in any language. Processing a sentence from English to French is not easily done by translating the basis of the words in the sentence. You have to take in account tenses, grammar, use of adjectives, and colloquialisms.

Translating Chinese to English takes another complex twist. Firstly, one is written in chinese characters, the other, in Roman alphabetics. To go through the arduous task of flipping through hardcopy dictionaries and thesaurus’s is not an efficient use of time in encrypting the complexities of the English language.

In China, the easiest way to translate English is to invest in a small pocket dictionary/translator that looks like a mini laptop which easily does the work for you. However, these machines sometimes fall short of giving the an accurate translation or severely mistranslates the whole sentence, which, is severely and most times humorously found with the signage around China:

Ouch.

Desirable.

Tasty tasty political ideology

It seems that Chinese officials are fed up being caught red faced with their country’s farce being lost in translation and have gone on a field day on correcting these signs.

Excerpt From the International Herald Tribune

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

“The purpose of signage is to be useful, not to be amusing,” said Zhao Huimin, the former Chinese ambassador to the United States who, as director general of the capital’s Foreign Affairs Office, has been leading the fight for linguistic standardization and sobriety.

However, amusing is often a sight rarely seen in the urban environment. The unofficial landscaping work of street art, buskers, and the occasional hysteric bum add to the vibrant atmosphere of a city. Why not leave the signs as a tourist attraction? It could give the country a much needed softer image of its power hungry, communist dictated state, to a little hilarity that foreigners can laugh about. A suggestion for the campaign:

COME CHINA, LAUGH AT BAD ENGRISH 2010!

After The China Milk…Now It’s China Slippers

When you think China, the word “Cheap” comes to mind: Cheap products, Cheap labour, Cheap food, and Cheap hookers.

Concentrating on the inexpensive products that come out from the People’s republic, I’m assuming with the thrifty price tags on the stuff that the country exports, it must practice greater ‘efficiency’ in the production process of these products.

I mean, forget morales, let’s focus on the economic perspective of hiring a million child workers.

With a greater supply of human labour, more products can be made to meet the global demand of Nike Shoes, Blackberries, and Anime figurines.

Since these kids literally eat cheap dog meat and work 23 hours a day, this means sweet mothefucking profit margins and lowered costs that would make Google cry.

Corruption does not exist with theoretical communism. But China thrives on the practicality of ‘under the table’ cash flow, which maybe, a couple of Yuan may have kept an eye shut when inspecting these babies:

Infectious Hawaiian slippers!

On the surface they look like non-threatening footwear.

But if you look beyond the pink colored horizon, palm trees, and hibiscus flowers, there is some radical toxins brewing with the plastic that transform your feet to look like this:

Gross, Gangrenous Feet

Plastic is rich in chemicals Thiuram and Dithiocarbamates, which is used in the production of the material, and can cause severe allergic reaction to sensitive feet when found in excessive amounts, which may lead to some serious looking warts, v-shaped scaring, and your friends twitching in fright when starting at your infected, zombie foot.

Dr. Nanette Silverberg from the Beth Israel Medical Center in New York has pinpointed that the chemicals in the plastic is the main cause of the infection.

““When you have a contact allergy like that, it’s not usually latex but one of the ingredients used to process rubber,” she said.

“Latex allergies are generally more severe, with hives, inhalational reaction where a blood test is conducted.”

These slippers have been imported worldwide, and can be easily found at your nearest Big W, Wal-mart, Giant, and pasar malam.

The feet in the images are attached to Kerry Stiles from Florida, where in her website she graphically describes the ‘seeping liquid’ that pusses out from the burns, which makes me want to puke in my mouth take action against the relevant Quality control authorities who allowed such a toxic product loose into our ‘environmentally concerned’ society.

Pwned.

You maybe drawn in by the tropical, floral designs, probably painted by some 3 year old Chinese child, but force yourself to look away from the $2 price tag, because those slippers may make your feet look like you were walking barefooted in Chernobyl.