The Chinglish Defender

Considering how few foreigners speak really good Chinese, isn’t the Chinglish coverage a little excessive? Clearly some of the phrases that appear on signs are ridiculously funny, and this is why it gets so much attention. But after dozens of stories on it you could argue you is feels a lot like bashing.

Don’t believe me? I found one on ABC News, one on NBC (via Reuters), and another on CBS news (and I thought CBS had eliminated their news division!). If you include all of the podcast reports I’ve heard the number goes up several fold. Among all of those only one story, which I believe was from the Newshour and focused on an American formerly of the army helping with the efforts, had much insight.

Last night was the tipping point for me. I was listening to a BBC reporter (via podcast) with only the most basic of Chinese skills essentially mocking a restaurant that had 口水鸡 translated as “Saliva Chicken” (a more palatable name would be “Mouth Watering Chicken” or something to that effect). He haltingly asked the waitress zhe shi shenme (“what is this?”), as if there was any chance that he would understand the response.

Presumably the emphasis of the story was China’s attempts to eliminate its Chinglish problem before the Olympics. Part of the effort that they mentioned involves setting up a hotline for people to call about menu questions. However, the story’s clear intention was to mock the errors as a point of humor.

Why do so many translations end up mangled, anyway? The problem is that Chinese words tend to come in 2-character increments. Often they can be matched together to create phrases (one author described them as “lego pieces”). If you do not know what word combination each individual hanzi, or character, comes from, you would be unlikely to guess the correct meaning.

Here is a very simple example:

The “Worker’s Stadium” in Beijing is officially called 工人体育场 (gongren tiyuchang). However, few people use its full name, instead shortening it to 工体 (gongti). If you actually look at the characters, there is no reason to guess that those two characters correspond with the phrase “Worker’s Stadium”. “工” is commonly used in words relating to work. Assuming someone could guess that it stands for workers here, then they would look at “体” for clues. Ti tends to mean body, like in 身体 (shenti). If you did not know that “体” used with other characters tends to relate to athletics, then a fair guess would be “workers’ body.” That sounds like a union, not a stadium.

This example is simple but illustrates how poorly Chinese and English correspond. When people try to translate things into English they look at each individual character, translating them separately, or assuming the combinations make sense. Furthermore some look in dictionaries and fail to differentiate among synonyms that have clear differences in emphasis (like this).

Now, I love a good Chinglish phrase as much as the next guy, but let’s not kill the locals for not knowing our language, when most foreigners here only speak rudimentary Chinese at best (note to smug ‘experts’: please write a 1,500 word essay in which you do not mangle any phrases). My point is not to bash foreigners for their Chinese—I’ve done that in a previous post—but instead to urge people to have some sympathy for the locals. I know it is normally hard to find compassion in my posts, but it’s there if you weed through the grouchiness and sarcasm.

Let me make two final points to bring the argument home. First, how many restaurants in the west have any foreign languages on their menu (excluding English)? And that is in countries where there are tons of foreigners and immigrants. Second, who usually works at small restaurants in China? It is certainly not the country’s highly educated class. All in all, I think it is well over due to cut locals a break on Chinglish.

Of course, you would think that you might ask a frequent customer to proof-read the menu before you printed 2 dozen copies.