Thanks to the WSJ again, I get to be amused.

It turns out that China has become embarrased about their bad translations. There are all sorts of signs and things with English translations that are…well…pretty funny.

Some are kind of incomprehensible, but some are nice. Their English for “Don’t Walk On the Grass” is “Show Mercy to the Slender Grass.”

They are not alone. I still giggle when I remember the sign the cleaning people put up after they’d shampood the carpets and they were still wet:
BE CAREFUL OF SLIP AND FALL

what first language resulted in that ESL sign? The cleaning people spoke spanish, but the sign was a printed form, so maybe they bought a bunch of them from asia at a discount. Hard to say.

We live in a complex world.

But China will be hosting the Olympics and have decided to clean up their language. There are language police going around and giving fix-it tickets to cities and restaurants, etc. for their bad english.

Of course there are fans of this sort of thing. Check this out:
www.chinglish.de