I included some funny English signs in the post about the journey to Longquan; I saw a lot all in on the same day, mostly in the same place. But I saw and took photos of others in various other places. Rather than put them in posts about those places, I’ve collected the rest of the strange English signs here. Enjoy!
Longquan, Zhejiang Province
Well, okay, let’s start with a couple more signs from Longquan.
This sign in the Longquan celadon museum says: “IN CASE OF FIRF PLEASE PO NOT USE ELEVATOR.” Errors like this really puzzle me. If you’re using any kind of digital translation or search tool, you’d just copy and paste, right? Not manually transcribe individual letters of a word, which would result in errors where a wrong letter is inserted because it looks like the right one.Siqi is explaining that the two Chinese characters that mean “exit” also mean “export”, hence this mistranslation in the Longquan celadon museum.So… this sign on the ground says LONGQUANGREENWAY. You see, there aren’t really spaces between words in Chinese. In fact, Linguists can’t really even agree what constitutes a “word” in Chinese, because it’s just not that important to distinguish between “words” and “phrases”. Anyway, that’s why Chinglish text is sometimes squashed together into megawords as if it’s trying to be German.This is another one of those errors that seems to be a result of manual transcription. How else do you get a lowercase L becoming an i in the word “electric”?I think I took a photo of this because at work I see a lot of errors in the use of “such as.” The problem sentence says: “His engraving techniques were extremely fine, especially in early Ming, such as the royal celadons unearthed from Fengdongyan kiln site of Dayao.” Well, okay, that’s not the only problem sentence here. I’m just itching to rewrite all this.I think “Do Not Step On It” here means the plants. But even “Do Not Step On Them” would be weird.
Huangshan City, Anhui Province
Okay, this is not a mistake, this is a business name with a pun: Auntea Jenny sells tea.This sign says “Flowers Full of Mercy Foot Diameter”. I think it’s trying to poetically tell people not to step on the grass, but the message is completely lost.
Huangshan Mountain, Anhui Province
This is cool, actually… These are markings on the ground in Chinese and English to show where the smoking area begins and ends (at the line).This sign saying “Be careful at the foot of” was at the foot of some stairs at the hotel we stayed at on Huangshan Mountain (Xihai Hotel).“Baconic”!!! (Yummiest fake adjective ever.)“The leg” was near the roast sausage dish and the baconic dish. (I think they meant “ham”.)Here is a fascinating mistake! It says “Tyasn Can Foy Cigayette Butts”. You can easily guess it means “Trash Can For Cigarette Butts”. But why these particular misspellings? Someone transcribed all the r’s as y’s based on visual similarity! You can imagine handwriting where these two letters could be confused, right? Also one h became an n. Those are more obviously similar.“Station of voluntary.” What does *this* mean?This dude has volunteered to sit at this station? I don’t think so, I think they pay him; he’s got a uniform with shoulder decorations and everything! But maybe he offers (volunteers) to help whoever needs help. Or maybe he organizes people who actually are volunteers? Not clear.This sign says “Grand Mount Huangshan Welcomes Guests All Over the World”. That’s obviously inaccurate. Mount Huangshan welcomes guests *from* all over the world.
Highway Rest Stop, Zhejiang
What’s behind this door marked “[Disabled] Meeting Facilities”?This is… a toilet stall!!! My mom spotted this sign too. I think she used this stall; sometimes the only non-squat toilet is the one for people with disabilities. Sometimes the sign says elderly/disabled. (In my experience, the sign doesn’t say “meeting facilities”!)
Shanghai
“The Han traditional spirituality lied in the theory that the dead would live a carefree and myriad life in the underground world and the state of immortality could be achieved after death.” This museum text talking about jade used for burials seems to take a strong stance: it is a *lie* that there could be life after death! But no, I think it means “the traditional spirituality was the theory that…” They meant to write “lay”, the past tense of a different “lie”!Man sits just beside a huge red-and-yellow sign saying “Don’t sit on the steps”. (Not the fault of the sign!)“Slippery road in rainy days” is not quite right.This is flatscreen monitor showing a map of the public restroom, including icons showing which stalls are currently occupied! It also shows which kind of toilets are in which stalls. (Sensibly, the women’s section has many more stalls.)“Detrainment Lane” at Shanghai Hongqiao Railway Station. This is the lane for people getting out of cars in front of the station. In other words, the passenger drop-off lane. The Chinese literally means “down guest way”. But that doesn’t really capture it; “down” can be a verb—in this case, “down” means something like “alight [from a vehicle].” Singapore uses “alight” a lot.Basically, they want cars to keep moving in the left two lanes.Biemlfdlkk???? This is baffling. Was this shop named by a cat sitting on a keyboard? Or maybe… is this Welsh? No! Apparently this name is based on the transliteration of the Chinese name of the business: bi yin le fen. I *still* don’t know where they got the “dlkk” at the end, though. It’s not some sort of legal abbreviation, like “Co. Ltd.” because it also has those letters at the end of the legal business name. Anyway, it’s a fancy “golf fashion” brand, just like the sign says. Whatever. I care about fashion very little, and golf absolutely not at all.
Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province
I have saved the best for last. These two are old favorites!
Okay so this is a sign over one of the entrances to the big Wanda Plaza shopping mall in Old Yuhang, near where Siqi and I live. We spotted this the first time we went into the mall, and it made me laugh so hard! The sign is encouraging people to go to Muji, a Japanese clothing and housewares store, by saying “left-handed rotation”, meaning “turn left”. (We also like to joke about another possible bad translation for “turn left”: Leftist Revolution!)This is actually a photo taken in early 2023 (rabbit year), when we first visited the mall because I don’t actually have one from August 2024.This might be my favorite bad translation *ever*… What could “invisible garments” mean, you wonder?“Invisible garments” is one of the services offered by a car wash and service center in the basement of our Wanda Plaza. It means “clear coating”!!! This is why I would argue that there is no such thing as a synonym: changing one word changes everything. Context matters!
