When I was in Beijing, a number of signs tickled me to no end.
I had a field day taking snapshots of the humorous signposts.
Now that this blog is officially up, I thought I might share one here that was considerably funny. I saw this in one of Beijing's Summer Palace:
At first glance, this was funny and I think it's pretty obvious to us why it is so.
However, being trained to be a linguist with an eye for detail and mind for questions, the natural question came to me:
"Why is it that the Chinese Chinese would end up with such sentence constructions when it is totally off the mark and results in another reading altogether?"
Admittedly, the translators must have made an approximation of an equivalent translation on a word-for-word basis. It seems like all that is missing from that sign is an adjective, probably along the lines of "carelessly" or "haphazardly" (given their penchant for outrageous translations). If that was added on, the sign would read perfectly well, and it would go to show that the Chinese (or those who translated the sign) had succeeded in stating an accurate prohibitory instruction.
Probably we don't use that many words for simple imperatives. I thought of our own signs and they frequently come in the manner of "Do Not Litter" or "No Littering". However, we can't deny that it is possible that some of the more verbose ones among us Singaporeans may well say things like "Ehh, please don't anyhow throw your rubbish anywhere hor!" (Equivalent to "Please don't carelessly throw your rubbish away")
I like the Chinese... ... street signs. They tickle me. Haha.
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