Chinglish

[paulsherwin]

The Wikipedia article on Chinglish is both informative and entertaining: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinglish

My favourite is the restaurant named 'Translate Server Error' http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=11907

[Stockden]

Actually, I thought that the RF Amp debug instructions weren't too bad, right up to the point in the Advanced Debugging section, which told me that "You should weigh yourself.". That's getting a bit personal!

Hugh

[BottleMan]

I notice the word "tuber" in the warnings for getting the winding turns wrong.
Could it be "tuber" --"potato" -- "chip" (of MOSFET)?
Graham

[Wendymott]

Early on.. when I started evaluating TV's from China for my employer...I had many a laugh re the translations..thus I started from scratch, Power point and Paintshop pro were used... yes I know there are better publishing softwares... but I used those to great effect..so we never had a Chinglish problem with our product.. the "odd" missed item once in a while, but mainly ok. Its no good giving some one to proof read... if the item is missing..however.. being now retired I passed that baton on to my successor.
I would have liked to do a "Yorkshire" version though........... Ey up flower... taa fer buying tha TV from us....... "Welcome.. Thank you for purchasing this Television".. haa haa
Thanks for the interesting comments from you all.

[Jon_G4MDC]

JIL SX200 Scanner proudly sported a

"Regurated Power Suppry"

It said so on the front.

[yesnaby]

Not just China:

'Explole Japan by Rail' tour.

[TonyDuell]

This may be apocryphal (but I suspect not) but there was a stand for something (I believe a musical keyboard) that came flat-packed. The instruction to tighten a threaded fastener when putting it together was given using a well-known 4-letter word starting with 'F'.

[emeritus]

The Japanese do have problems with "R" and "L". At work I sometimes helped out with on-line searches, and when looking for "current mirror" circuits, we had to look for "current miller" as well to get all the Japanese stuff.

[McMurdo]

I once gave a friend a German technical manual and asked his German father if he could translate it as he was fluent in both. The manual came back untranslated as he said most of the technical terms were jibberish to him. Makes sense really.

But as the west is surely a major export market for the far east, and they seem to make in such massive numbers, you'd think they'd make the effort to get it right.

As an example, Pioneer, a Japanese company who have a pretty decent reputation in the west, still ship their (chargeable) service manuals written in pigeon English.

[Oldcodger]

Not just the simple Chinese firms. I've been on many a course at a Japanese major Telecomms & Electronics firm and after first course, it's always easy to read the manuals, be it an installation/service or user manual for any of their products.
Saying that ,I worked for a major UK telecomms firm at one time, setting kit up etc and occasionally we got to read the handbooks for customers technical staff. I'd say "Factorese" might be the best equivalent.

[turretslug]

I expect that we've all smiled, scratched our heads and occasionally sworn at pictogram instructions for the assembly and use of things intended for an international market- but, given the preceding comments, it's hardly surprising that many manufacturers resort to them! Way back, Philips, with a market that encompassed many languages were one of the pioneers in the art- though, being Philips, there was always a suspicion that there was an element of wanton wackiness involved....

[greenstar]

Possibly slightly ot, but have just purchased on behalf of my mum (I will use it) a telescopic hedge trimmer through the Telegraph newspaper. The instructions are the worst I have seen. The only literature enclosed is a leaflet, which contains no assembly information at all. It starts with three pages of health and safety (tie back hair, don't us in rain etc) advice. There is then an exploded diagram, not very good. Followed by a description of using the chainsaw attachment (optional, i did not have) and finally, how to change from chainsaw to trimmer, which gave me a lead on how to attach that.
There is nothing about how to use it, and holding it, attaching and using the strap, is not obvious.
Quite apart from the language issue, it is badly structured, lacks entirely essential information, and simply doesn't make sense! These days you could at the least give a link to a website with an instructional video. Dire. Never seen anything so awful. The trimmer itself seems ok.

[avocollector]

Although Chinglish is often delightful it really is often simply an extreme case of non suitable idiom that you get with any non native speaker. I suspect our language, for all it's variety, is far more regimented than we think and that many foreign expressions while even grammatically correct are simply word combinations we would not use. Even with native French and German speakers who are fluent in English as a learned language their translations often hit one as quaint or different in some way; so with the added complexities of Asian languages are we really to be surprised at the expressions used.

[paulsherwin]

Apparently there is a great shortage of fluent English speakers in most of China (just as there aren't many fluent Mandarin speakers in Britain). There are lots of bilingual Hong Kongers but they speak Cantonese rather than Mandarin.

[dseymo1]

There do seem to be some forgivable but regular errors which occur in the majority of translated instructions. For example, 'weld' for 'solder'. I wonder if there's a widely-used technical dictionary which isn't entirely accurate.

[McMurdo]

I don't see any reason why something couldn't at least be emailed to a proof-reading agent before it's printed.
If I pay a reasonable price for something imported by a UK dealer or retailer then I do sometimes wonder about their commitment to quality if they haven't even approved or vetted the manual before ordering a container load of them.

[Dave Moll]

But then, I suppose it's all about a "pile it high; sell it cheap" philosophy.

[dseymo1]

Good point, Kevin.
I wonder how often the evaluation samples come with a manual.
I suspect in many cases it's a matter of 'That looks OK, we'll take 10k units, here's the carton artwork, and - oh yes - could you chuck in a user's manual?'

[paulsherwin]

While some of this is undoubtedly down to cost cutting, there is a real shortage of bilingual English/Mandarin speakers globally, and most of those are working for governments or universities. Chinese manufacturers just rely on machine translation, especially for short run stuff.

[dodgy-dxer]

Both English and Cantonese are "official" languages in Hong Kong

https://www.cia.gov/library/publicat...k/geos/hk.html

All Government documents I have come across are written in both, and officials go out of their way to help non-Cantonese speakers. My daughter was born there and I had to register the birth. My father in law came along to help translate but was not needed. Mine was the only queue number called in English all morning and once I had admitted I didn't speak Cantonese the lady spoke English impeccably through the whole process.

The 3.5% of English given in the CIA fact book seems very low, apart from my mother in law and her father, everyone I meet speaks English pretty well!

Fred

Originally Posted by paulsherwin

There are lots of bilingual Hong Kongers but they speak Cantonese rather than Mandarin.