The Real Meaning of Chinglish
It isn’t always just poor translation
I lived in China for a couple of years back at the turn of the century. Like most ex-pats there, I had a catalog of my favorite Chinglish phrases.
Chinglish, for those of you who haven’t heard the term, is defined by the OED as “language which is a mixture of English and Chinese, especially a type of English that includes many Chinese words and/or follows Chinese grammar rules.”
Sometimes Chinglish is a result of simple misspelling, as in this example:
And a once-popular translation software, the Jinshan Ciba, often rendered normal Chinese words into their rather vulgar English equivalents. You might remember the notorious “Fuck Vegetables” sign that made the rounds on Facebook a few years back. (It should have said “dried vegetables,” but the Chinese word “gan” can be used as a slang word for intercourse).
Or there’s this unfortunate rendering:
