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Lost in translation

As China develops there are more and more signs written in English around the country. Sometimes the English is fine. Sometimes... not so much.

Sometimes the errors are typographical, like the "tarvel agency" in the Beijing hotel.

Other times the writing is obviously written by someone who knows English grammar, but who is obviously using a dictionary to supplement their vocabulary without a way to judge which would be the most idiomatically correct choice of a definition. Like the tv in the hotel in Xian that bore the sign that said something like, "Our tv has 50 channels. They are all in order."

And sometimes you get things like this:

leave away the glass fences

Or this:

"All offers communicated based on a $100 spend."

Oh wait. That last one wasn't Chinese - it was a sentence in a United Airlines mass mailing...!

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This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on August 27, 2006 10:22 AM.

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