Archive for Lost in translation

Super color Doppler, part 2

[This is a guest post by Greg Pringle, in response to questions I posed regarding the photograph at the top of this post from yesterday, mainly: 


What does the Mongolian script say?  Does it match the Chinese*?  Are there any mistakes in it?

*The Chinese is short for "in color with Doppler ultrasound".]

The Mongolian says önggöt – het dolgion – zurag (ᠥᠩᠭᠡᠲᠦ ᠬᠡᠲᠦ ᠳᠣᠯᠭᠢᠶᠠᠨ ᠵᠢᠷᠤᠭ). It literally means "coloured ultra-wave picture" or, as Google Translate has it, "colour ultrasound imaging”. My Inner Mongolian dictionaries confirm that önggöt het dolgion zurag means literally “彩色超声波图” in Chinese and it is found on the Internet with that meaning.

You quote Diana Shuheng Zhang as saying the Chinese means "Color Doppler Ultrasound". I did find önggöt doppler zuraglal (Өнгөт Допплер зураглал) "coloured Doppler sketch” in Mongolian-language pages on the Russian Internet, and Jichang Lulu found a couple of sources from Mongolia.

Rather than continue confirming what you already know, I think it fair to bring up the issue of terminology.

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Omnibus Chinglish, part 2

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Omnibus Chinglish, part 1

Fantastic collection of Chinglish examples from WeChat.

There are 18 examples all together.  I've already done 2 or 3 of them (see under "Selected readings" below), and a couple of them are not so great.  That leaves around a dozen that are previously unknown and quite hilarious.  I'll do them in two or three batches.

1.

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Super color Doppler

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Please do not feel confused

From Victor Steinbok:

AC app installation instructions.  This is a disclaimer page at the end. There's some other funky language in the manual but this one is the most interesting.

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Husband Nursery

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Gentle reminder for women who approach the cenotaph of Genghis Khan

Trilingual tablet at the altar of Genghis Khan (ca. 1162-1227) in Kandehuo Enclosure in the town of Xinjie, in the Ejin Horo Banner in the Ordos Prefecture of Inner Mongolia:


(source)

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Quiet thirst

Mark Swofford, who is visiting the Jiaobanshan (Jiaoban Mountain) Park in Fuxing District of Taoyuan City, sent me this photograph of a sign introducing the area:

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"Beer is the most squeezed giraffe"

[This is a guest post by Nathan Hopson]

Today I bring you this cringey translation from the social networking app Line (developed in South Korea, very popular in Japan):

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Trilingual Shandong beach toilet civilization

Since these signs are rather long and in three languages, I will not apply the customary Language Log treatment of Romanization, transcription, and complete translation, but you should be able to get a good idea of what they are all about nonetheless.

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Lobby bar, I think

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Dangerous water chestnuts

An anonymous reader sent in this stumper:

I discovered the attached while researching for a new laminating machine.  The device mentioned is pictured in the screen shot. I did save my money by not choosing this one.


(source)

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"Please wait patiently for the failure of the system"

From Andrea Mazzucchi:

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