Delightful Chinglish

I had a fun week with the good students. The subject was idiom and translation—basically an introduction to not speaking Chinglish. Of course it's hard, typically, to find a good example of why learning proper idiomatic expression is important. Luckily I had a secret weapon at my disposal: the packaging of a lock Joan got with her new electric scooter. (I know I promised pictures when we next had good weather. We honestly haven't had any good weather recently. The closest we got was a half-overcast day on Friday and instead of going out for pictures we worried more about things like laundry.)

This lock package has what is probably the most delightful example of how not to do it that I've seen in China. It is absolutely breath-taking in its incomprehensibility. Let me give you a taste:

Quality is our fundamental
Ares locks on a "quality-oriented, good faith for the first" for the purpose of the constant pursuit of true wood products is expected, good looks, so that Every consumer to buy a Heart, and must feel at ease.

Maintenance:
In the course of use, such as the case of Ni Chen debris into the Keyhole, a key rotation or impeded access difficult situation, not to inject viscous – The lubricants, use a small gasoline into Suoxin, and then repeatedly inserted key cleansing, and afterwards in a few keys on the increase Qianfen(pencil Core Mo) can be lubricated.

(Note: all formatting and spelling errors above are verbatim from the package. I made sure there are no transcription errors.)

And so it goes on and on. Splendid, isn't it? It's like the god of bad English descended to make a perfect example for my lessons.

What I initially intended to do turned out to be too difficult, so I had to dumb down the exercise a bit. Originally my plan was to have them try and back-translate the Chinglish into the original Chinese and then translate it properly. It turns out that they couldn't recognize the relevant Chinese idioms and structures when expressed in another language. In the end I had to have someone in the class type out the Chinese on the screen so that they could just do the straightforward one-way translation.

The point of the lesson, of course, was to show that there's an awful lot more to language than mere grammar and vocabulary; that when (not if!) they found themselves having to do business in English with people from around the world they'd better learn idiom as well on top of everything else.

Of course their translations were better than what's on the package. (They'd have to be!) However the exercise highlighted other problems. Aside from the usual bunch of spelling and grammar errors (which aren't really important here since I'm not teaching English majors) there was a big difference in communication style. Their translations were circumlocutory and frustratingly vague with overuse of the passive voice. This is not the favoured language for business communication. Next week's lesson has practically written itself!

One of the questions I asked the classes was "Why is there any English on this package at all?" I got the usual suspects in terms of answers: maybe they want to sell abroad or to foreigners living in China, etc. I did get an interesting thought from one student however. He opined that the English was there to make the company look international to Chinese eyes. If he's right—and he well could be—then the quality of the translation doesn't matter at all. It's intended to wow the rubes, after all, not native speakers. That was food for thought, something I always like getting from my students.