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Somebody sent me this sign from a supermarket in China:

Yí zhàn shì gòuwù de shǒuxuǎn

一站式购物的首选

One dyadic station shopping head elects

This is one of the most bizarre specimens of Chinglish I've ever encountered.

If we omit "dyadic", the rest of it is easy to figure out (it should be "First choice for one-stop shopping" — no sweat).  Usually, even when a translation is incredibly peculiar, it doesn't take me long to figure out where the translator (whether human or machine) went wrong.  In this case, "dyadic" is so unusual, yet so specific, that I figured it must have had some basis, otherwise the translator would not have gone to the trouble of inserting it out of thin air (pingkong 凭空).

I was hooked.  I had to figure out where "dyadic" came from.

Of course, it's possible that the individual who sent this sign to me copied it incorrectly.  But what would have prompted him to add such a rare, technical term?  Furthermore, from other things that he talked about in his message and his manner of writing, I could tell that he was by nature a careful person.

Normally, I don't write about such matters without photographic documentation or an "obligatory screen shot", yet in this case I was so intrigued by "dyadic" that I quickly began to formulate various hypotheses and do research in support of them or to disprove them.

Meanwhile, although I did not directly impose on my correspondent by asking him to go back to the store with a camera or cell phone (he didn't have one the day he spotted the sign and copied it), I did hint that it would be helpful if I had one, and I did ask him a number of questions to flesh out some of the information he had initially sent to me (just that it was from a supermarket in China).  (Let this be a tutorial for how to decipher Chinglish, if you're interested in becoming proficient at it.)

Here's what I asked:

1. what was the full name of the store?

2. was everything in the store you went to inexpensive?

3. what province / city / town / section of city was the store in? (that makes a difference)

[A second set of questions — I found out some pertinent things during the interim.]

4. Where is this store located?  In a small town?  In a poor part of a city?  Is it in Yantai, Shandong?

5. What kinds of products do they sell?  Mostly cheap goods?  Prices?

My correspondent thought from #3 and #4 that I suspected topolectal usage.  I wrote back:

I never did think that the mistranslation was related to topolectal or dialectal usage, but more to demographics.

I thought that I should back translate from "dyadic" to Chinese.  What I got was èrjìn 二进 or èryuán 二元.  The former seemed too mathematical for the context of a supermarket slogan, so I concentrated on the latter, which is more sociologically oriented.

Thus I tried to find a connection between "dyadic" and shopping.  Although it sounds far-fetched, there is actually some scholarly literature on this subject.  Here is an example of one such publication:

"Adolescents and Adults at the Mall: Dyadic Interactions"
Readdick, Christine A.; Mullis, Ronald L.
Adolescence, v32 n126 p313-22 Sum 1997
See here and here.

Abstract
The purpose of this descriptive study is to examine differences in interpersonal engagements between teen-teen dyads and teen-adults dyads in a mall setting. It was expected that behavioral patterns between teen-teen and teen-adult dyads would differ as a function of age, gender, and racial composition. Participants included 865 teen-teen dyads and 190 teen-adult dyads. Observations were conducted in a large mall over four weeks. Observers recorded behavioral activity, physical proximity/position, emotional expression, conversation, and evidence of shopping. Teen-teen dyads differed from teen-adult dyads on two variables, conversation and shopping evidence. Within teen-teen dyad comparisons yielded several gender and racial differences, but only one age difference. Implications of these findings are discussed.

Hmmm…, maybe.  So I slept on that for a night.

Next morning when I awoke, I was delighted to find that my correspondent in China had sent me some more vital information:

The store is certainly not high-end, but it wasn't a corner chāoshì 超市 ("supermarket") either.

Province: Shandong

City: Yantai

Section: Not far from the commercial port; abutting a number of sea cucumber wholesale markets.

All of this conformed to my emerging hypothesis about the slogan.  Above all, the correspondent also sent me the following photograph:

BINGO!!

That's exactly what I was hoping for.  The solution to the puzzle of the meaning of "dyadic" lay in the logo of the store.  Within two seconds of seeing the logo, I had figured it out.

Now we know the name of the store, and we also see the logo, of which they seem to be very proud, right next to the name:  Zhènhuá liàngfàn 振华量贩 ("Zhenhua [Promote China] volume / bulk vendor" [trying to be like Costco] — they call themselves "ZhenHua Mart" in English).  All of this fits with my theory for the origin of "dyadic".

Notice too what the attendant pictured in the montage has in her left hand.  That instrument will also be featured below in our explanation about what kind of store this is.

Just to make sure I wasn't dreaming (though I was quite certain of my solution), I asked more than half-a-dozen friends and students, all native speakers from the PRC, what they thought the logo represented.  I told all of them what I thought the logo stood for, viz. èryuán 二元 ("two yuan [RMB]").  Most of them explicitly and emphatically disagreed with my opinion; only two of them agreed with me.  Here are a couple of their interpretations of the logo:

1. an apple — perhaps signifying "fresh" (Zhenhua Mart is a large wholesale supermarket that prides itself on fresh produce and sells in bulk, so it can't be a 2 yuan store)

2. stylization of "Z" and "H" for the name of the store

Although I am convinced that my "2 yuan" theory is the primary correct one, I believe that either (or both) of these other conjectures may also be secondarily operative, which is why the store is so proud of its logo — it cleverly conveys so many virtues of their business!

Here's how we may visualize the different possibilities for the meaning of the logo:

Name of the store:

&

Apple 🍎:

"2元" (combination of a "2" and a “○”：

&

However, as soon as I saw the logo, I somehow could immediately make out "2" + "元".

Finally, one of the correspondents who agreed with me that the logo does primarily signify "2 yuan 元" also made the interesting suggestion that the yellow square itself symbolizes a Chinese ingot of gold, and I agree with her.

A 2 yuan 元 store in China implies that you would be able to buy everything in it for 28¢ US.  They are called èr yuán diàn 二元店 ("2 yuan store") or èr yuán chāoshì 二元超市 ("2 yuan supermarket"), etc.

Here's what the front of a typical 2 yuan store looks like:

The writing says:  quánchǎng 2 yuán 全场2元 ("everything in the store for 2 yuan").  Naturally, not everything in the store costs exactly 2 yuan (= 28¢ US).  The idea is that everything in the store is cheap, and most of it does cost around 2 yuan or less.

Of course, this reminds us of "dollar stores", e.g., "Dollar Tree", in America (and 100 yen [a little less than a dollar] stores in Japan).  I've been in many of them, and am always amazed at what you can find there for a dollar or less.  I simply don't understand how such stores can make a profit, but many of them actually thrive.

Several of my students said that they frequented these 2 yuan stores when they were in middle school and high school and that they carried "decorative stuff and things for women", as well as "stationary and girl’s accessories 🙈 and "hairpins, sticky hooks, and other sundries".  Some even said that they remembered when they were in elementary school there were yīyuán diàn 一元店 ("1 yuan stores"), but they don't exist any longer. They also remarked that you don't see many 2 yuan stores anymore, and that they may be found mainly in rural areas.

Nowadays people think that èr yuán diàn 二元店 ("2 yuan store") only have "cheap and poor-quality products".  You do, however, find some shí yuán diàn 十元店 ("ten yuan stores") — such stores even passed through 4 yuan and 8 yuan stages — that are more, ahem, "respectable".  Other reasons for the withering away of the 2 yuan stores that were given are "flourishing of the economy", "increasing price level", "the development of online shopping", and "the policy of so-called 'decentralization of the non-capital functions of Beijing'".

Still, my students remember the old days when they used to go to these 2 yuan stores, and even fondly recall the loud announcements of the attendants:

"Emergency demolition!  Everything must go!  Crazy sale!  2 yuan!  2 yuan!  Everything for only 2 yuan!  If you don't buy now you'll lose out!  If you don't buy now you'll be a fool!"

Here are some scenes from inside a real Zhenhua Mart, which may be found at many locations in North China today:

Clearly not a 2 yuan 元 store!

So how do we square the primary symbolism of the 2 yuan 元 logo with the reality of Zhenhua Mart supermarkets today?  I think that Zhenhua may have started out as a 2 yuan 元 store, and they cherish their humble origins.  Even if they didn't start out as a 2 yuan 元 store, they may aspire to the ideal of such stores in making goods available at the lowest possible prices.

Reading

"It's a time sex thing, baby" (8/8/07)

[Thanks to Yixue Yang, Yijie Zhang, Chenfeng Wang, Lin Zhang, Qing Liao, Tong Wang, Zeyao Wu, and Xiuyuan Mi]

August 23, 2019 @ 10:44 pm · Filed by Victor Mair under Language and advertising, Lost in translation, Slogans

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