Language Log

Reader and fan Will Thompson wrote to Mark Liberman, who passed his letter on to me, about a recent article by Ellen Barry in The New York Times, discussing a book by the Russian political analyst Nikolai V. Zlobin in which he explains weird/different American cultural norms to Russians.

Will notes that towards the end, the reviewer states:

He [Zlobin] devotes many pages to privacy, a word that does not exist in the Russian language[.]

And Will is suspicious of that claim.

Last year in August, Valerie Syverson sent in a photograph taken at a storefront in Sydney's Chinatown that showed a package labeled "Bradysia homozygous". That sent me on a wild-goose chase, but eventually I was able to identify the product as leek turnovers and describe how the translation error had come about (see "Fungus gnat turnovers").

Now Valerie, who seems to get around the world, spotted the product in the following photograph in a Chinese grocery store in Ypsilanti, Michigan:

From a post entitled "Paging Victor Mair" on his blog, Karl Smith sent me the following photograph:

PMW writes:

The recent menu posts on LL reminded me of a photo I took circa 2003 in a busy tourist spot on the Cote d’Azur, France. I’m not sure I’ve seen a sign in Europe with such a diversity of translation errors.

The menu describes a set of prix fixe alternatives, including for the first course

Martyn Cornell sent in these entries of a menu from a cheap-and-cheerful “Italian” restaurant in North Point, Hong Kong run by local Chinese:

With the international attention given to the trial and conviction of members of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot on charges of "hooliganism," many have wondered online whether Pussy Riot is a translation of a Russian name. But no: the band consistently uses Pussy Riot (in Latin characters) on its official LiveJournal blog, even though most of the text is in Russian (in Cyrillic characters). This isn't too surprising among punk/alt-rock bands worldwide. Whether it's the Japanese noise rockers Boredoms or Russian ska-punks Distemper, musicians very often use English in Latin script for the names of their bands (and titles of albums and songs), even when their lyrics are in their native language. But how have Russian sources identified Pussy Riot?

It is well known within organic chemistry circles that there is a very strong bias toward L rather than D homochirality in the structure of earth's organic compounds. A recent paper offered a speculation about a possible explanation of the bias:

If there was … right circularly polarized light with energy in the uv or higher irradiating the asteroid belt when the amino acids were present on a particle that later came to Earth, this could account for the small excesses of the L anantiomers seen in the &#x03B1-methyl amino acids.

And what did the PR/media machine do to make news out of this finding? The headlines ultimately mutated as far as this:

Claim: Advanced dinosaurs may rule other planets

Reader CM writes:

Last Sunday I went to a cafe in central Wiesbaden. In Germany, some ingredients have to be declared on restaurant menus. This is usually done via footnotes, with a key on the last page. That's what was done on this cafe's menu, and the footnotes in German were completely unremarkable:

But the English version of the footnotes delivered a wonderfully weird little surprise:

Elliot Sperling took the following photograph a couple of days ago (July 16) in Reb-gong or Rebkong (Tib.: རེབ་གོང /reb gong / Repkong / Ch.: Tongren 同仁). Reb-gong (Tongren) is about 150 km south of Xining, the capital of Qinghai (Kokonor) Province, and around 200 km to the southwest of Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu Province, in the northwestern part of the People's Republic of China.

Kate Baldanza took this photo in Nanjing:

In the bathroom at a friend's house tonight I saw, on the underside of the toilet lid, firmly affixed with adhesive, a printed paper sign that I truly do not understand. That is, although I comprehend it (it is in six languages, all of which I read well enough to be able to follow the legend in question), I don't follow what its purpose could possibly be. I am truly baffled. Let me show you what it said. Keep in mind that the following is all of what it says. Nothing is missing from the label, and there is no other wording at all (and incidentally, the various accent mistakes are not mine, they are copied from the original). See if you are as baffled as I am:

Pastry shops are very popular in Beijing and other Chinese cities. One chain is called Wèiduōměi 味多美 ("flavor-much-beautiful"). On the company website, they call themselves Wedomé, but the workers' uniforms sport the name Weiduomei.

Julien Paulhan sent in the following photographs taken at a Weiduomei bakery in Beijing:

The fabrication of "taikonaut" is not the first time that an attempt has been made to insert a made-up Chinglish word into English.  There have been a number of such instances in recent years.  A particularly notorious one that I recall is the case of bùgěilì 不给力 ("ungelivable", lamer variant "ungeliable").  Bùgěilì 不给力 is the antonym of gěilì 给力 ("astonishing, powerful, fantastic, cool, awesome, exciting, effective, enhancing").  The wide range of meanings and nuances for gěilì 给力 does not bode well for an easy translation of its opposite, bùgěilì 不给力, into other languages.  I shall return to the meaning and translation of bùgěilì 不给力 below.  But first let's take a closer look at gěilì 给力.