Language Log

A recent achievement of helpful Google AI — Anna Brown, "How a glitch in an online survey replaed the word 'yes' with 'forks'", Decoded 3/21/2025:

At Pew Research Center, we routinely ask the people who take our surveys to give us feedback about their experience. Were the survey questions clear? Were they engaging? Were they politically neutral?

While we get a wide range of feedback on our surveys, we were surprised by a comment we received on an online survey in 2024: “You misspelled YES with FORKS numerous times.”

That comment was soon followed by several others along the same lines:

• • “Please review [the] answer choices. Every ‘yes’ answer for me was listed as ‘forks’ for some reason. I.e. instead of yes/no it was forks/no.”
  • “My computer had some difficulty with your answer choices. For example, instead of ‘yes’ for yes or no answers, my display showed ‘forks.’ Weird.”

From a Hong Kong restaurant:

Seldom does a matter of correct / precise translation go viral the way these words of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi to American Secretary of State Marco Rubio did:  "hǎo zì wéi zhī 好自为之".  The set phrase ("chéngyǔ 成語") has been rendered scores of different ways, most of them dismissive or pejorative.

Why Wang Yi’s message to Marco Rubio may have been lost in translation:

There has been much discussion about how to interpret an idiom used by China’s foreign minister in talks with the US secretary of state

Meredith Chen, South China Morning Post (1/28/25)

With the changing of the guard at the State Department, the new Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, and his counterpart in China's Foreign Ministry, Wang Yi, must needs have a dialog, a man-to-man conversation, so to speak.  As is customary with China's wolf warriors, however, Wang Yi was up to his old habits of giving young Marco a jiàoxùn 教训 (let's just call it "a lesson", not quite a "dressing down").

Here's how the most critical part (the final portion) of Wang Yi's communication was reported in an AP article on the event:

“I hope you will act accordingly,” Wang told Rubio, according to a Foreign Ministry statement, employing a Chinese phrase typically used by a teacher or a boss warning a student or employee to behave and be responsible for their actions.

[This is a guest post by Christopher Paris (website).]

I just wanted to thank you for your 2009 essay on the misinterpretation of “wēijī” as meaning both opportunity and crisis.

This controversy takes on dramatic new importance as the misinterpretation has been used to justify the invention of a school of thought that “risk is positive.” When challenged with English language dictionaries dating back to the 1700s, showing risk as typically meaning a potential threat or harm, the proponents of “positive risk” run to the wēijī trope. They say, “the Chinese came up with this 3000 years ago, so English dictionaries don’t matter.”

From Michael David Johnson:

I found this sign (image below) on Queen's Road West near Exit A of the Sai Ying Pun MTR in Hong Kong. The shop was closed but I think it's a Chinese Medicine shop. Google gives me no results for "recycled bezoar" or "bezoar reciclado," so I seek your knowledge. Bad translation or just something that's not (ever) written in English? I assume from the Portuguese that this must be popular in Macau too?

After having been away for a couple of months, when I returned home, I found this message from Maia Karpovich:

Yesterday, I ordered some 100 watt 'corn bulbs' from Amazon to deal with the darkness in my bedroom. The box came with some 'warm tips' included as an insert.

La 9e édition du Dictionnaire de l’Académie française:

La 9e édition du Dictionnaire de l’Académie française, dont la publication a commencé dans les années 1980, s’est achevée en novembre 2024, avec la parution du tome 4 aux éditions Fayard.

The 9th edition of the Dictionary of the French Academy, whose publication began in the 1980s, was completed in November 2024, with the publication of volume 4 by éditions Fayard.

Le Dictionnaire de l’Académie française est l’un des plus anciens dictionnaires de la langue française, dont la première édition date de 1694 et a été suivie de sept autres datant respectivement de 1718, 1740, 1762, 1798, 1835, 1878 et 1935. La 9e édition, dont les trois premiers tomes sont parus en 1992, 2000 et 2011, est désormais achevée ; elle constitue sans aucun doute la version la plus aboutie du projet académique, auquel elle reste fidèle et dont elle conserve les principes.

The Dictionary of the French Academy is one of the oldest dictionaries of the French language, the first edition of which dates from 1694 and was followed by seven others dating respectively from 1718, 1740, 1762, 1798, 1835, 1878 and 1935 The 9th edition, the first three volumes of which were published in 1992, 2000 and 2011, is now completed; it undoubtedly constitutes the most accomplished version of the academic project, to which it remains faithful and of which it preserves the principles.

We've looked at the Chinese of the first item en passant before (here), but not in detail, and the English of this version merits investigation:

From the menu of a Chinese restaurant in Eden Prairie, MN:

A Facebook post sent to me by shaing tai: