Oliver Lutz Radtke - More Chinglish : speaking in tongues

When you fly to Beijing these days, somethings missing. At Beijing Capital International Airports Terminal 3, there is no longer a sign reading No entry on peacetime. The Chicken without Sexual Life is now absent from menus. And the ten-foot-high neon billboard reading Dongda Anus Hospital has disappeared. But you wonder, is Chinglish really gone? You step into one of the side streets near the Drum Tower and find it there in all its glory: a bar offering coffee with iron and a last rape soup, public parks inviting you to Let us do the birds friend and to Fall into water carefully. Happily, you realize that Chinglish is indestructible.

China is experiencing an unparalleled historical period of reform and opening, and in many ways, an anything goes attitude contributes to why life in China is so exciting. But at the same time, this attitude is also a significant contributor to a general sloppiness in many aspects of Chinese life. Chabuduo in Chinese, or works anyway in English, is a phrase that defines a lot of hasty production processes where quality should be a major concern.

Many people are fighting Chinglish, both on an official level, where it is a general embarrassment for the government, and on a personal level. David Tool, a retired army colonel from the United States, is one of the better-known protagonists, in Chinese newspapers regularly appearing under his Chinese name, Du Dawei. Since he came to Beijing seven years ago, Tool has made it his mission to eradicate broken English throughout the Chinese capital. When foreigners come here, I want them to understand Chinese culture, he says. I dont want them to make fun of it. An English professor at the citys International Studies University, Tool says he has corrected more than one million mistakes as a consultant for the Beijing Speaks Foreign Languages Committee, which has released twelve volumes of guidelines for medical signs, commercial signs, and gymnasiums. For his efforts, in 2006, the City of Beijing awarded Tool its highest honour, the Great Wall Friendship Award.

I sat down with Tool and Wang Xiaoming, director of the English Language Center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), in a talk show on Beijing TV. It was an interesting discussion, since Tool and I both want the same thing: to introduce foreigners to the richness of Chinese culture without making them stop at the language barrier. While I laud individuals like Tool for their spirit and agree with the necessity of correcting hospital and other public signs that make life in Beijing less of a hassle, I usually fear that such efforts also take away a linguistic culture that can be seen as a facilitator, not an obstacle. So I was positively surprised to hear Wang Xiaoming say that despite the million signs they already corrected, both she and Tool are very much in favor of keeping certain Chinglish translations that carry the original meaning rather well, for example No Nearing for qing wu kaojinand Keep Space for baochi cheju. Unfortunately, its just us two on the committee who think this way, says Wang.

My collection of Chinglish signs has grown over the years to more than 1500 examples. I took a representative sample from my collection and came up with several unique categories where Chinglish is most likely to appear: commercial products, company signs, warnings, PR gibberish, public education, and restaurants and tourism.

The result: Chinglish for public education is by far the leader. By public education, I refer to such beauties as Be careful, dont be crowded or You can enjoy the fresh air after a civilized urinating. This confirms an important point: Chinglish is first and foremost a form of anonymous communication, mostly between official institutions and the public. It is openly displayed and often contains a schoolmasterly or motherly tone of instruction. In other words, Chinglish, with its educative tone and its anonymous top-bottom setting (we educate, you follow), is closely related to the mass education campaigns of Chinas Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (196676). Today, just as in the past, white characters on red banners are used to tell people how to act, and, by relation, who they are.