Chinese Trying to End So-Called "Chinglish"

Pamplets to Promote Proper English

As part of a preparation for the 2008 Olympics to be held in Beijing, the Chinese government has decided it's time to stop so-called "Chinglish" once and for all. Though previous attempts at properly using the de facto "language of the world" have been disastrous, this time, the totalitarian government means business.

"Chinglish," for the unaware, is the tendency for humorous results when a native Chinese speaker with limited proficiency in English tries to make something or say something in English. For example, an English speaker who visits China might see tee-shirts which read "I charmed heart doggs" or with instructions that say "Razor wash tumble dry no caterpillar."

Such translation difficulties are more often noted with China and other Asian countries such as Vietnam, Thailand, and to a lesser extent Japan for a variety of reasons. First, Chinese is a language based on pictograms rather than a standard alphabet. This has led languages such as Chinese, Korean, and Hmong to have fewer true words; instead, each pictogram in Chinese can express a variety of different words in English. In Chinese, there are 50,000 characters (although more words if one is being technical); in contrast, English has almost 1,000,000 different words by the standard count. Their pictograms express vague concepts defined by context; ours feature more precision, and this leads to troubles.

Thus, what happens is that when Chinese is used poetically or sometimes even literally, a native Chinese speaker is faced with 10 alternatives in English and often they choose the wrong one. Often they apply English formation rules to their choices not realizing that the word they formed already has another meaning. For example, a park in China that celebrated multiculturalism was recently translated as "Racist Park."