Language Log

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:

Board in front of a Hūnyīn dēngjì chù 婚姻登记处 ("marriage registration office") in Chongqing, China:

(source)

Two years on, and still my favourite Chinese mistranslation…. pic.twitter.com/0EHeQjybeB

— Antiokhos among the Angles (@AntiokhosE) May 6, 2020

From Brenton Recht:

I live in a city with a large immigrant population in general and a large Bosnian population in particular (Utica, NY [VHM: population around 60,000; between Syracuse and Schenectady]). As such, I see "BiH" bumper stickers once in a while on the road. Most of the Bosnian population either came during the breakup of Yugoslavia or are children of those immigrants, so they are probably following the American trend of putting round stickers on your car for things you like or identify with, rather than the European usage of using them to identify country of origin.