Somking

July 7, 2023 @ 11:50 pm · Filed by under Lost in translation, Signs

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Sign at Dunhuang, at the western end of the Gansu Corridor in northwestern China, where I did my doctoral research more than half a century ago (there were no signs like this in those days):

The sign says:

qǐng wù xīyān

请勿吸烟

"Please do not smoke"

Easiest Chinglish I ever had to figure out.

Selected readings

 

July 7, 2023 @ 11:50 pm · Filed by under Lost in translation, Signs


9 Comments

  1. martin schwartz said,

    July 8, 2023 @ 12:54 am

    To a non-Sinite (but not anti-sinite) like me, Somking sounds like some toponym. In (Y)Erevan, on a street named after the inventor
    of the Armenian and quite possibly and plausibly the Georgian and Old Udi (Aghvan–or if one must, "Caucasian Albanian") scripts, Mashtots, there is a façade with an imposing arch (arches have a way of imposing) with a sign "Smocking" (sic), leading to a tobacco store and some manner of bar, perhaps a hookah bar–I didn't go in.
    Photos online.
    MS

  2. John Swindle said,

    July 8, 2023 @ 2:31 am

    Somking may or may not be a place, but Google Maps finds Som King home builder, temporarily closed, in Hanswar, U.P., India. And just yesterday I saw but didn't visit the Phở King Vietnamese Restaurant in Wahiawa, Hawaii.

  3. John Swindle said,

    July 8, 2023 @ 5:01 am

    Apologies. I see that "Phở King" and its associated pun are common for Vietnamese restaurants in the English-speaking world.

  4. cliff arroyo said,

    July 8, 2023 @ 5:52 am

    "(there were no signs like this in those days"

    Perhaps somking wasn't a problem back then…..

  5. cameron said,

    July 8, 2023 @ 12:15 pm

    is it really Chinglish, or just a typo?

  6. nhan hong said,

    July 9, 2023 @ 4:00 am

    King level is higher level than that of Star in many spheres, mostly arts. Phở King sounds unusual to me. Before the advent of internet, king&queen were not attributed to quality or size in Vietnamese. One more thing to note, I never knew of Phở before moving outside my birth place in the lower Mekong Delta, in Vietnam.

  7. Victor Mair said,

    July 9, 2023 @ 6:10 am

    "Chinglish"? "just a typo"?

    Think about that.

  8. J. Martin said,

    July 9, 2023 @ 5:26 pm

    Came across a sign with the exact same Chinglish almost 10 years ago in Chengde (my own photograph):

    https://flickr.com/photos/oculardrafts/51205685222/in/album-72157719283739911/

    Should even more signs like that pop up, we might call it a variant xD

  9. Victor Mair said,

    July 9, 2023 @ 5:53 pm

    @J. Martin:

    Good memory; excellent suggestion.

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