Language Log

This Chinese article is about a man who has made a living by painting slogans and ads on village walls for thirty years. Some of the slogans are rather bizarre, as may be seen by looking at the many photographs in the article.

The article says it is such a well-paying job that the man was able to buy 6 apartments in his hometown with his earnings. Painting on walls is one of the major ways to advertise or propagate goods and ideas in the countryside.

There are many examples of such signs in the article, but I couldn't understand all of them upon first glance, so I wondered if the country folk would be able to read the signs. I asked a number of my graduate students from China, and they all said, yes, the country folk not only would be able to read them, but would enjoy them and would be motivated to buy the products and services promoted by the signs.

Sol Jung, a former Penn undergrad, took this photograph more than a decade ago, but I'm only now getting around to posting on it.

There's quite a story behind the photograph and why it took me so long to write this blog post about it.  I will explain below.

Sign in Vancouver International Airport:

Segregated line-ups for vaccinated and unvaccinated international arrivals at Vancouver International Airport. Photo by Andrew Aziz. (Source)

This post is a follow-up to "Nordic amorous room" (5/5/21).  In the comments to that post, cliff arroyo remarked:

I feel like a dope for being the one who has to ask, but….

"Childrens parent-child room"

What?

He was referring to another part of the sign on which "Nordic amorous room" appears, which you can see by clicking on the title above.  I replied to him:

I was hoping that no one would ask the question that cliff arroyo did, because it's nettlesome, but since he did, I started working on a reply to it early this morning. Now that John Swindle has given us one idea of how to explain the conundrum, I feel all the more compelled to do so. Will post by this evening — within about nine hours.

Sunny Jhutti sent in this photograph of an Indian shop sign:

Photos taken and curated (also here) by Ruan Qi:

1. "Chī duōshǎo ná duōshǎo 吃多少拿多少" – "Take as much AS YOU CAN" –> "Take as much as you eat".

This is from a hotel in Shaoxing, Zhejiang, serving buffet.

Sign at a shop in Changzhou, Jiangsu, specifically at the Computer City mall:

Taken in Jiaoxi, Yilan County, Taiwan:

Screen shot from this video (at 0:34) about an express delivery service in Kashgar, Xinjiang, China:

From Victor Steinbok:

Sign on the wall of a school:

(Source)

Posted to the Twitter thread that began with the Arabic menu full of spectacularly bad mistranslations into English featured here ("Accuracy of sheep meat" [5/26/20]):

It reminds me of pic.twitter.com/wWEYOOKvjU

— robert affinity (@affinity292) May 25, 2020

Sign from Hong Kong: