"It is forbidden to dog"
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(Source: posted and removed on Reddit;
the same image has been previously posted)
The Chinese says:
yánjìn liù gǒu
严禁遛狗
"Dog walking is strictly prohibited"
Nathan Hopson comments:
Sometimes you just have to #facepalm and #smh, etc."
The Engrish is bad enough, but there are not enough indefinite hyperbolic numbers in my vocabulary to reflect how bad the suggestive signage makes this…
Selected readings
- "Scoop the poop" (4/15/15)
- "Communicating with cats and dogs" (4/21/19)
- "Canine backtalk" (10/25/19)
- Google images
AntC said,
May 25, 2025 @ 5:38 pm
"You Went Dogging?!"
Chas Belov said,
May 26, 2025 @ 12:34 am
When a dog barks at me and their human apologizes, I usually reply "Dogs gonna dog."
Jenny Chu said,
May 27, 2025 @ 2:38 am
We have a marvelous Japanese product (a spray) that keeps our cats away from things they are not supposed to touch. It's called "Don't Cat"
Philip Taylor said,
May 27, 2025 @ 3:31 am
So if you were to spray it on your pussy's pussy when she is in season, would it keep the tom-cats away ?
Aardvark Cheeselog said,
May 27, 2025 @ 4:49 pm
I'm thinking this is not even mistranslation, just QA failure at the sign-printer. Leaving out "walk" be "to" and "dog," because the person doing the final camera-ready layout could not notice that they were missing it.
Jonathan Smith said,
May 27, 2025 @ 5:33 pm
Impeccable grammar — there is a single dog to whom "it" (cough) is forbidden. Bad translation into Chinese.
ajay said,
May 28, 2025 @ 8:56 am
It's perfectly straightforward. If you dog someone or something, you follow them closely. It is forbidden, in this place, to dog. (Perhaps because it's seen as rude or threatening; perhaps for practical reasons, such as a need to spread out traffic on a weak bridge or overpass, or to prevent unauthorised people "tailgating" through a security door. Who knows.)
The illustration makes this clear. It shows a silhouette of a person who is following something closely – "dogging" them – with a superimposed red circle and diagonal bar, a symbol understood internationally as a prohibition.
I admit it's a little confusing that the silhouette person is actually dogging a dog, rather than another person or perhaps a giraffe, but signmakers are surely allowed a little whimsy.
Tom said,
May 30, 2025 @ 7:51 pm
The strategically-placed diagonal line really raises the question.
If you enjoy this kind of humor, you should become an ESL teacher, and you can hear such things every day. It is the closest you can get to infinite monkeys typing word salad on infinite typewriters to produce jokes.
Tom said,
May 30, 2025 @ 8:02 pm
@Aardvark Cheeselog-
It's more likely that this resulted from someone using a translator/dictionary to acquire "It is forbidden to" and then, not understanding the grammar at all, just added "dog" on the assumption it would make sense in English. ESL students often make sentences like "I want to pizza" for this reason.
Another common mistake is memorizing a question and then adding the topic at the end: "What do you like? –food", which comes out, "What do you like, Food?"