{"id":13679,"date":"2014-08-04T12:06:10","date_gmt":"2014-08-04T17:06:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=13679"},"modified":"2014-08-04T13:10:34","modified_gmt":"2014-08-04T18:10:34","slug":"please-pee-in-the-pool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=13679","title":{"rendered":"Please pee in the pool"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Kenneth Yeh sent in this pair of signs from a restroom in China:<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/~bgzimmer\/pleasepee.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"Click to embiggen\" src=\"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/~bgzimmer\/pleasepee.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The first sign is straightforward,<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">j\u00ecnzh\u01d0 x\u012by\u0101n \u7981\u6b62\u5438\u70df<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;with the correct translation: NO SMOKING. It is odd, however, that the second sign declines to provide an English translation, giving only pinyin romanization:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Qing xiao bian ruchi \u8bf7\u5c0f\u4fbf\u5165\u6c60<\/p>\n<p>With tones marked and correctly parsed, that would be:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">q\u01d0ng xi\u01ceobi\u00e0n r\u00f9 ch\u00ed<\/p>\n<p>Why didn't they translate this into English?<\/p>\n<p>If you use the main online translation websites (Google Translate, Baidu Fanyi, Bing Translator, and iCIBA), they all say: \"Please urinate in(to) the pool\".<\/p>\n<p>Somebody at least had the good sense to say, \"Noooooo, that won't do.\" So they decided simply to leave it in pinyin.<\/p>\n<p>Another possible reason is that it was intentionally left in pinyin for Chinese citizens who can't read characters or English. We have encountered this phenomenon before: \"<a href=\"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=3491\">Pinyin in practice<\/a>\" (10\/13\/11).<\/p>\n<p>Lexical notes:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">q\u01d0ng \u8bf7 (\"please\")<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">xi\u01ceobi\u00e0n \u5c0f\u4fbf (\"piss; pee; urine\")<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">r\u00f9 \u5165 (\"enter\")<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">ch\u00ed \u6c60 (\"pond; pool\")<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">bi\u00e0nch\u00ed \u4fbf\u6c60 \/ xi\u01ceobi\u00e0n ch\u00ed \u5c0f\u4fbf\u6c60 (\"urinal\")<\/p>\n<p>For additional context and background, see this latest post in our \"urine\" series: \"<a href=\"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=13140\">Greater and lesser conveniences<\/a>\" (6\/25\/14), with a list of earlier posts on urination.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kenneth Yeh sent in this pair of signs from a restroom in China:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lost-in-translation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13679"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13827,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13679\/revisions\/13827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}