Simon and Katy's Travelogue: Bad English Translations and American Privilege

Over the past 5.5 months in China, English signs have made my life easier. Chinese words are incredibly intimidating to a non-native speakers because they are comprised of characters, rather than letters. Sentences don’t even have spaces in them, requiring the reader to know where each word stops and the next begins. All of this would make navigating around a city of 24 million people (or a country of 1+ billion people) next to impossible. But thankfully, English signs are pretty common and they make the difference between being able to independently explore a place and relying solely on smartphones and tour guides to help me get around.

This perfectly nice sign meant that it was easy for me to find my way through the Chengdu Panda Research Base

I recognize this as a form of “white”, but really American, privilege. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen Chinese characters written on a formal road sign, metro stop, or other location in the US. (I’m sure there are a few instances where I’m wrong, but broadly speaking this is incredibly rare). Growing up in Vermont and so close to Montreal, every once in a while the highway signs are in French, but even then there aren’t very many. (Plus French and English are much more closely related than English and Chinese).

So all this is to say that I am thankful English signs exist in China.

And… sometimes the English translations are pretty funny. Since my first weekend here, I’ve been taking pictures of the best translations I have found from all around the country. I’ve told a few of my expat Shanghai friends about this post as it has been in development and they too have a strange fascination and appreciation for these signs. They help us find humor in situations that can be challenging and frustrating. And some of them are worth sharing. (At least I think so. But to be honest I don't know how well this is going to translate for people who haven't spent time in China.)

These signs fall into a few categories:

It's a typo, and the new word that they've created is amusing
The dictionary definition works, but it’s never the word I would pick
What the English says is the exact opposite of what the word means
I have no idea what the sign is supposed to mean

So without further ado, here are the “best” (or maybe the worst) signs I’ve found over the past 5.5 months here in China:

(and a note to readers - despite my best picture editing, these are probably easier to read from a computer screen than phone)

Typos

This reminded me of how Simon says "water"

Whishky sounds like a word people who've had too much whiskey might say

Maybe putting all the letters backwards was on purpose?

Because there are no "letters" in Chinese, sometimes they use letters as if they were characters. For instance "clelegation" looks like "delegation". At a different musuem, they were using upside m's for w's, and using h instead of n.

I think this supposed to be "cakes" but it took me forever to figure it out

How does one get "into" their pet?

Dictionary Definitions

This is outside a really ugly looking skyscraper that I'm not even sure is a residential building. I don't know why they are calling it a mansion. Plus a "group" mansion sounds pretty weird

With the whirligig of tim(e)...

Pool view sounds like a good thing!

This is closer to the desired meaning... but still it's a little extreme!

Apparently this one isn't a typo... this e-commerce site calls products "babies". But when I translated it into English, I was surprised to have a website telling me to look at my baby