Archive for Translation
March 13, 2016 @ 8:00 pm· Filed by Victor Mair under Language and advertising, Translation
In "Our hands, your mystification" (3/12/16), Mark Liberman found an English translation of the Chinese version of the iconic Allstate slogan, "You're in good hands with Allstate", in a 2003 Chicago Tribune article, and it comes out as "Turn to our hands to be worry-free."
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February 20, 2016 @ 3:02 pm· Filed by Victor Mair under Dialects, Topolects, Translation
In the Sinosphere section of yesterday's NYT, there's a thought-provoking article by Didi Kirsten Tatlow titled "Speak Uighur? Have Good Vision? China’s Security Services Want You" (2/19/16).
She describes how an advertisement on a career website at a Chinese university offers a glimpse into what skills the state security system finds valuable for employees.
There's one paragraph in the article that troubles me:
Students who belong to the Uighur, Tibetan, Kazakh or Mongolian ethnic groups or who can speak those languages, or those who know Chinese dialects such as Fujianese, Hakka, Cantonese or Wu should apply, the ad said. Those are dialects spoken by people in Shanghai or in the nearby southeastern seaboard or in the south of the country.
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February 2, 2016 @ 5:50 pm· Filed by Victor Mair under Gender, Neologisms, Translation
Nathan Hopson writes from a conference at Nagoya, Japan:
One of the discussants just mentioned that the words tóngqī 同妻・ tóngfū 同夫 are recently being used in China to refer respectively to a "wife with a homosexual husband" and a "husband with a homosexual wife".
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January 3, 2016 @ 11:56 am· Filed by Victor Mair under Language and culture, Language and the movies, Topolects, Transcription, Translation
Over at China Economic Review, Hudson Lockett has written an interesting piece worthy of the celebrated British sleuth:
"The game is afoot! Why Chinese Sherlock fans are as confused as everyone else" (1/3/16)
It's all about how the Chinese term — mǎtí nèifān zú 马蹄内翻足 — for a congenital deformity referred to in English as "clubfoot" (talipes equinovarus [CTEV]) figures in the "slaveringly awaited"
New Year’s Day special episode of the series starring
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December 27, 2015 @ 9:26 am· Filed by Victor Mair under Names, Pronunciation, Transcription, Translation
[This is a guest post by Jichang Lulu]
The usual Chinese name for the Lena River is 勒拿河 Lèná hé. That's not a particularly felicitous transcription. Lèná rhymes with 圣赫勒拿 Shèng Hèlèná i.e. St Helena; it fails to reflect the palatalisation of the l in the Russian name. An alternative name transcribes the syllable ле with 列 liè, following the usual practice.
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December 10, 2015 @ 2:11 pm· Filed by Victor Mair under Translation
Don Clarke spotted this suspiciously named dish at the Diàoyútái dà jiǔdiàn 钓鱼台大酒店 (Diaoyutai Hotel) in Beijing on 12/9/15:
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November 22, 2015 @ 8:11 pm· Filed by Victor Mair under Language and technology, Translation
An article by Nick Vivian in USA Today informs us:
"Tokyo's airport is using this incredible megaphone to translate into three languages on the fly" (11/22/15).
The person wielding the megaphone speaks into it in Japanese and the megaphone amplifies her messages in three languages, one after another: English, Korean, and Chinese.
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November 20, 2015 @ 11:42 am· Filed by Victor Mair under Language and religion, Lost in translation, Names, Transcription, Translation
This is a sequel to "Tibetan –> Chinese –> Chinglish " (11/11/15).

(‘Alone, Popecity’ 独克宗, a street sign on National Highway 214 at the entrance to Shangri-La, 2015. Photo: William Ratz)
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November 16, 2015 @ 11:34 pm· Filed by Victor Mair under Style and register, Translation
Nathan Hopson sent in this photo of a sign that is posted above the urinals at the Atsuta Shrine in Nagoya, the #2 shrine in Japan's Shinto hierarchy:
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November 9, 2015 @ 11:04 pm· Filed by Victor Mair under Signs, Translation
Zach Hershey sent in this photograph of a sign in Central Park NYC:
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November 8, 2015 @ 9:53 pm· Filed by Victor Mair under Humor, Translation
From a student:
Here are very popular "emoticons" [VM: "image macros" might be more appropriate] that young Chinese people send each other while online chatting. They use "literal" translation of Chinese into English to achieve a comedic effect. I don't think they reflect the young generation's bad English; they actually suggest that the young Internet generation's English is good enough to understand that such translations are ridiculous and thus funny. My personal favourite is "I don't eat this condom."

wǒmen hǎoxiàng zài nǎ'er jiànguò 我们好像在哪儿见过
("it seems as though we've seen each other somewhere")
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November 8, 2015 @ 10:27 am· Filed by Victor Mair under Language and science, Language and technology, Translation
In a comment to "An orgy of code-switching" (11/6/15), I wrote:
In connection with the ABC Chinese-English dictionary database which they wanted to buy, I had some dealings with Microsoft in China about 15 years ago. Already then, their internal language in the Beijing and Shanghai offices was English. Around the same time, I also had contact with several other major companies in China where the situation was exactly the same.
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October 28, 2015 @ 5:40 pm· Filed by Victor Mair under Signs, Topolects, Translation
Andrew Herron sent in this photograph taken on Hospital Road, Hong Kong Island:
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