Campaign targets almost-bilingual signs
www.chinaview.cn 2005-09-12 13:55:23BEIJING, Sept. 12 — Sources with the Beijing Municipal Traffic Administration said a campaign was launched on September 6 to standardize bilingual signs along the city’s second and third ring arterials, including principal and minor ones. In addition, checks also cover signs in the city’s major tourist attractions and scenic spots. Confusing and misleading signs will be replaced.
“Should nothing unexpected happen (during this process), problems related with bilingual (Chinese-English) signs will be adequately addressed,” a member of staff with the administration told reporters.
Problems with translations ranging from careless spelling and bad grammar to cultural misinterpretation are commonplace due mainly to a lack of professional translators. A typical example would be “Stop cashier”, a sign often seen at supermarket or department store cash tills.
The message is confusing and takes an English-speaking visitor a second or two to understand that what it’s really trying to say is “Cashier Closed” or “Till Closed”.
The take-a-dictionary-and-translate-literally method of translation employed by substandard translators sometimes results in ludicrous errors. An example would be the shoddy translation from chukou (exit) to “export”, and from shusan (evacuate) to “scatter”.
The absence of uniform criterion and a designated standardization institution contribute to another major issue with bilingual signs: the mixed use of Chinese pinyin and English for road signs. For the Chinese characters which mean “minor arterial (road)”, some signs display the Chinese pinyin fulu while others use “service road”, which is not entirely correct.
Speaking of the mixed use of Chinese pinyin and English in road signs, a facilities official with the administration spoke about the dilemma they face.
“The National Chinese Committee orders the use of Chinese pinyin while the Beijing Citizen Speaking English Office demands the use of Chinese-English bilingual signs,” the official lamented.
Pinyin News
news and discussions mainly related to Chinese characters and romanization
Very interesting story. It doesn’t require every Beijing business and agency to hire costly native English speakers. There are alternatives :-
Someone could prepare a booklet of standard English translations of common signs.
The EU has standard multi-lingual translations for the dozens of official languages, for purposes such as safety warning labels.
Does Beijing routinely use pictograms for signs (such as the green running figure for ‘exit’, or the red triangle for ‘warning’) ? Such an approach reduces the need for translation of many signs to written languages (but would be a difficulty for those from countries where pictograms are rare, such as the U.S.)