Monday, December 03, 2007

Chinglish


'Chinglish' used to be a phrase used (occasionally by bbcs) to describe the haphazard and sometimes clumsy mixing up of Chinese and English in conversation.

Recently the phrase has been used more to refer to funny signs and notices that include comically bad translations of Chinese into English and, just in time for Christmas, it's even become a book title.

I had a flick through the book while I was Christmas shopping and some of the examples are quite funny but they do become tiresome after a while. The whole book would probably only give someone about 20mins of amusement.

Seeing as there is probably an inexhaustible supply of these funny signs, the 'Chinglish' phenomenon looks set to run for a while before everyone gets bored of it. Here's my tip of the day: You can save yourself the cost of the book simply by looking up Chinglish on Google Images. ;)

No comments: