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.

Yeah, so, well, delays happen.

I know. Sunday update on the next Thursday. I got busy. Sue me.

Sunday I spent most of the day buying a replacement external DVD drive so I could finally get Joan's new laptop working the way I wanted it to work. (English Windows, Chinese Windows add-on, English Office, Chinese Office add-on.) That was two days total work. (I am not making this up!) Oh, and I installed Ubuntu on it, complete with Chinese language support so that when Windows died I'd have some way to recover the lost data. (This is why I use Ubuntu, after all, when I found that I could recover my data on my trashed system using Ubuntu, but there was no way I could do it with Windows.) Anyway, on top of all that I had some problems accessing Blogger and it was Thursday before I thought to try again, so here I am.

Other than the excuse above, this is going to be an all-Lucas post. If Lucas bores you, you might want to tune out and visit a site with interesting content.

Lucas is developing into quite the little handful. He's very demanding, very active and very assertive. Pretty much exactly what I expected which is why Joan and I were always hoping for a girl. He's also large. Very large. I don't have exact measurements right now, but he's probably around 75cm tall or more and definitely over 30 pounds by now.

He's developed a few idiosyncracies which can be cute or aggravating depending on circumstance and person. First, now, he's very clear on what he wants and when he wants it, he'll point demandingly and then stare at the person who's supposed to get it for him. This can sometimes lead to comical tears when he does things like points at the light fixture on the ceiling and gets crushed when nobody will go get it for him. (I find the tears in these situations funny. Joan, not so much. I'm just a bad man at heart.)

The second idiosyncracy he has is his fascination with faces. He loves to grab onto various parts (nose, lips, ears, etc.) and examine them closely. Or if he's in a more active mood he just loves to scratch over them. (I can't begin to count the number of times I've had to pull my head back quickly because he was about to claw my eyes out.) He also likes sticking his fingers into ears, nostrils or even mouths. Hell, sometimes he loves sticking his whole hand into people's mouths if they're stupid enough to let him.

A final idiosyncracy is his nomenclature. He knows I'm "ba-ba" and Joan is "ma-ma". He even usually gets Joan's mother somewhat right as "djia-djia" (it should be "jia-jia"). He has, however, identified personality traits with other things. Things that are comfortable and comforting are also "ma-ma". Things that give him food (outside of milk) are "djia-djia" and things that he finds fun and exciting (I'm the one most prone to throwing him in the air and swinging him around, after all) are often "ba-ba".

Development-wise, he's a bit of a slow one. Kind of like his old man. He's only just now learning how to walk, for example, and he's really, really bad at it. We have a little harness for him that we use to let him trundle around without him falling flat on his face or, I think, he'd never walk at all. Of course I know that normal child development has walking going on between 9 and 18 months, but Joan and her mother are positively convinced that he has some major problem and are constantly worrying. (This seems to be generally Chinese woman behaviour: worry over everything whether or not worrying accomplishes anything.) Lucas, of course, is oblivious to all of this as he screams and giggles while trundling forward at breakneck speeds. He's positively delighted at the mobility. And the accessibility of all those interesting things he could only see from a distance before.

The adventure continues. Next time I'll really post on Sunday instead of delaying so long.