Chinglish

[Wendymott]

Hi Peeps... Just a word of warning.... I bought a RF FET Power amp kit from our far eastern friends...... The delivery was excellent.....much sooner than expected... the data sheet was non existent.... it was a web site download, which after an email to the vendor,// did work... However... you must be conversant in CHINGLISH...
Whether it works or not.. we shall see...

[Andrew B]

We an very acusustom to instruction chinglish not we, making part 1 and 2 together make with welding part together, cautious is not be be heat over and no more higher voltage.

It's very funny, but hell, could we give them instructions in Chinese for an English product?

[Refugee]

Originally Posted by Andrew B

It's very funny, but hell, could we give them instructions in Chinese for an English product?

There is very little chance of finding anyone whom even stands a chance of doing that

[Andrew B]

What is Chinese for "Pass me the hammer"

[Radio Wrangler]

Because of the Hong Kong connection of many years, there are many Cantonese speakers in Britain, but relatively few Mandarin speakers. The two spoken languages are sufficiently different that speakers can't understand each other, but they share a common written language. So I think it wouldn't be too hard to get written instructions done for British products destined for China.

David

[Dave Moll]

I've never understood why firms (not just Chinese - if anyone else still makes things) can't employ people fluent in the target language (more important than the source language) to write manuals ... except that it's probably cheaper either to employ a local who might think they can speak English (or whatever) or even one of those ghastly software tranlators.

[Martin G7MRV]

High end bespoke/low volume high value manufacturers do - one of my colleagues was poached for that very purpose, because he's English but fluent in the source language.

I have no problem with Chinglish - its essentially toddler speak. If you can understand a toddler you can understand chinglish, the trick is to recognise the key words amongst the scribble.

That said, I have the back up of a friend who is a fluent English speaking Chinese lady who happens to be an electrical engineer

[Jeremy M0RVB]

Originally Posted by Dave Moll

I've never understood why firms (not just Chinese - if anyone else still makes things) can't employ people fluent in the target language (more important than the source language) to write manuals ...

Because you not only need to be fluent in the target language, but also the source and target technical terms. Something telling you how to wash clothes should be easy but a complex technical term may not even work easily in Chinese.

We have a English-fluent Chinese friend who works as translator between Chinese and English but simply cannot cope with technical issues. She also will not translate legal texts as the concepts get changed and become invalid. We have some mainlander solicitors for those.

Oh, and language academics can be as bad. I checked a translation of a phrase someone wanted to use on some clothing by showing it to mainlanders who all burst out laughing. Basically something like 'event helper' got translated to Chinese and when translated back by mainlanders the equivalent was 'I am very friendly'. So English to Chinese can be as troublesome and yet may make perfect sense to the person that translated it in the first place.

[lesmw0sec]

On translations, I always smile when I think of a Siemens data book which had been translated. One IC was described as having three grades: Standard, Fast & Damned fast!

[Dave Moll]

I agree with Jeremy that familiarity with the terminology used in the source language is necessary to avoid misunderstanding what is to be translated. My point is that a more intimate knowledge of how the target language is expressed is needed to make the result readable and understandable.

I'll give an example from my own experience of Biblical Greek. Whereas I can make a pretty good stab at translating a passage of Greek into English (with the help of a dictionary where necessary), I would struggle to construct sentences in grammatically correct Greek from an English text, even though I fully understand the English and can translate (most of) the words into Greek. The difficulty is putting them together in a grammatically correct way, without which they can end up as nonsense.

[dseymo1]

Just for fun, try taking a moderately complex sentence, and using an online translation service to convert it to an unrelated language. Now use the same service to translate it back to the original

[Leon Crampin]

Can't wait for the instructions for operating Hinkley Point....

Leon.

[Wendymott]

Wow... I was not expecting such a response.. here is the offending article..I mean I can get by with it.... but hard work.

[yesnaby]

Do the Chinese have an equivalent Engrish?

[emeritus]

I recall that "Damn Fast" was an expression used by an American company in the mid-1970's to describe their family of very high speed op amps or comparators, but can't remember which one.

[Andrew B]

All laughing aside, I notice that they are always extremely polite in emails and seem to go the last mile to help customers.

I am looking for a box/enclosure for my LCR/ESR T4 component tester and have mailed quite a few suppliers in the East with enquiries.

[Radio Wrangler]

It's a logical literal translation. Wire has become line and enamel has become paint. So enamelled wire has become 'paint line'

All that's happened is that a translation has picked alternative words without being guided by context.

Idiom can make things even funnier. Purchasers of one brand of car were once advised to "avoid the skid dragon which hides near...." which has a nicely oriental flavour.

David

It's got pictures which always translate well, I suggested this item to Wendy and mine works (into a dummy load so far and still in a draw at work) .

The cores are very sharp and do need a bit of smoothing down (I used wet and dry). One thing I did was to sleeve the wire before passing through the core, pulling the sleeve off one 1/2 a turn at a time, bit of a pain but there are but a few turns.

[Wendymott]

Thanks for the reminder Merlin.. Next weeks job this..

[PsychMan]

I see this a lot. But hey, at least they try. I bought a kit from a radio parts store in Holland, and got instructions in Dutch I had to use google translate on, still, they do the job.

While I wish we made more things in the UK, I'm always very impressed with how polite they are in correspondence and how much they try to help. Also for the money you get some amazing stuff from China that you simply cannot find here. Plus some shockers, I must admit - high power PLL FM transmitters with poor designs and no output filtering. A ready made kit for low grade pirates to spew harmonics everywhere and cause great annoyance!