I had dinner at a Chinese Buffet yesterday, as I often do. When I opened my chopstick package, I read the following on the side opposite the pictorial direction side:
This is exactly what is written there. It also says: PRODUCT OF CHINA.
So…is there an attempt by the Chinese manufacturer to be cute, or do they think what they have written on the packaging is grammatically cool? How difficult would it be to pay someone who is a native english speaker to proofread, considering that you are sending out millions of pieces?
This is so offensive. The Chinese are now deliberately stealing the American gags about bad Chinese translations of English, and releasing them back to the west as a very subtle and sarcastic form of mockery. As soon as I can work out who to be offended on behalf of, I’ll be up to bat.
I have a friend who goes on buying trips in China. There are a lot of small factories (located outside the larger cities) that specialize in turning out small items for worldwide export. The stuff is made really cheaply and sold for a not huge mark-up. My point is the guys don’t spend extra money on unnecessary things like having a foreigner proof-read something that won’t make much difference.
That was my first thought. The cynic in me, however, kept imagining Wong Chopstick Company owned by some tycoon who hasn’t spoken a word of Chinese his whole life.
Thanks for the phrases Kegg. I’ll give them a try.
Odds are, they just wanted to have something there for you to read. Grammatical accuracy probably wasn’t even on the radar.
Literally, “ho sik” is “good (to) eat”, though I’d use “ho kay toi” (good waiter) or “door jeh” (thank you) instead of trying to dance around the turkey thing.
Several years ago, when I lived in Beijing, a new office for a major western bank opened up not far from a friend’s apartment. I walked by as the painters were putting the finishing touches on the fancy sliding glass doors, and their work read: “Welcoming to You.” On the front doors of an American-owned bank, ferchrissakes!
There just isn’t a lot of effort expended in getting proper translations of things.
And in Mandarin, good food is “hao chi” [sounds like how chir] and you can call for the waitress by saying “xiaojie” [sounds like shao - jieh].
You said it all in the last sentence, IMO.
Also IMO, the food does taste better when eaten with the glorious implements mentioned.
Damn, I want some noodles. Carbs are your friends.
Peace,
mangeorge
If we’ve got the same package of chopsticks, the other side of the wrapper has instructions on how to use chopsticks which are written about as perfectly as you could expect, though lacking any kind of punctuation:
Learn how to use your chopsticks
Tuck under thumb and hold firmly
Add second chopstick hold it as you would a pencil
Hold first chopstick in original position move the second up and down Now you can pick up anything
So if this can be translated well, why can’t someone rewrite the front to say something like "Welcome to this Chinese restaurant. Please try your delicious Chinese food with chopsticks, which are traditional and typical of China’s glorious history and culture.
(Bolding are my edits. Hey, I was only trying to make the sentence read, not make a lot of sense.)
It’s “Chinglish” - a brave and sincere attempt at English by a non-native speaker. Obviously, they think they’re doing it right. Typically, a chopstick factory would have no English speakers, but maybe someone who studies it as a hobby got suckered into writing the copy for the package. No-one else at the company would know it was flawed.
It’s so common here (to some extent) and in the Mainland (a lot) that you don’t notice it after a while. You can understand the basic meaning and that’s good enough.
Incidentally, there’s a street near where I live called Rednaxela Terrace. One theory is that the painter of the original sign (over 100 years ago) wrote the word ‘Alexander’ from right to left, as Chinese was then.
I doubt the translation’s accuracy has any impact on their sales, so yeah it probably would be a big deal to scout around, hire a good translator, have the bosses haggle over the issue, finally change the printing dyes in the factory, and the continue selling the same numebr of chopsticks for the same price when they’ll never so much as get one “thank you” card for their efforts from a concerned enlgish-speaking customer, let alone see any more money come back from the change.
I’ve long made fun of that blurb, but I think you’ve got it wrong, unless they’ve corrected it. Isn’t “glorious” actually printed as"glonious" and isn’t “cultural” spelled as “cultual?” The shit I remember. :smack:
We get them over here, too. It’s done deliberately so that you and your friends can have a little chuckle – “Get a load of these crazy foreigners” – and enjoy a little frisson of cultural superiority with your hoi sin sauce.
