Chinese expert needed to solve sign mystery

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Posted: Wed Mar 07, 2007 7:38 pm

There are several web sites devoted to humorously bad English signs in non-English-speaking countries. Funny as they are, you can usually figure out what they are trying to say. But this one has some big mysteries. Can someone read the Chinese and tell us what it means?

Baiting Guru Joined: 31 Jan 2007 Posts: 12237

I protruded the tartness and keenness out of a staircase once and got 30 days in the slammer. I don't recommend it.

Posted: Wed Mar 07, 2007 9:11 pm

All of a sudden everyone is coming out of the closet as a tartness/keenness protruder.

Sadly, a Chinese government agency is now going around Beijing fixing or removing bad English signs. They don't want to be laughed at when hordes of foreigners descend on Beijing for the Olympics next year. Many expats in China consider the signs wonderful tourist attractions and will miss them when they're gone.

Baiting Guru Joined: 04 Jan 2006 Posts: 3193

You don't need to go to China. Hotel in Worthing, Sussex, England:

"Before using shower, draw curtain and hang inside bath."

Posted: Thu Mar 08, 2007 12:17 am

Here's a couple of great chinese translations Laughing

419Eater is my life Joined: 26 Jan 2007 Posts: 356

www.engrish.com has hundreds upon hundreds of these things. They post a new one every day. Very Happy

Posted: Thu Mar 08, 2007 5:52 am

The sign at the top reads:

Quote:

Required information for riding the escallator

-Stand close to the hand rail, Board the escallator one by one, do not move about while riding the escallator.

-Children and the elderly should be accompanied by an adult.

-Do not cause an obstruction or play near the entrance.

-Use the elevator carefully, it is strictly forbidden to sit on the hand rail.

-Do not take bycicles onto the escallator

-Do not allow sharp or dangerous objects to protude from the staircase

I think the fact that they require such a detailed set of instructions at all, for something like riding an escallator speaks volumes about the Chinese approach to utilizing communal forms of transport.

Posted: Thu Mar 08, 2007 6:06 am

Excellent, Battery, thanks so much! Now that you explain it's an escalator, not a staircase, it makes more sense.

By the way, in line 4, you meant escalator, not elevator, right?

Are you a native Chinese speaker? Your English is so good that I assume English is your native language and you learned Chinese, or else you grew up in Asia and are bilingual.

I took conversational Cantonese for a few quarters in college. I can say "Nei ho ma", "Ngo hai Jungwok yan", and a couple of very nasty sentences I learned from my Hong Kong-born roommate.

Thanks again!

Posted: Thu Mar 08, 2007 6:23 am

I meant escallator yeah right.

In Chinese the two words are the same - elevator, escallator. I wasn't really thinking about it when I was typing.

Thanks for the compliment on my English. I am in fact a normal white bloke from Ascot in England. I live in Shanghai and learned Chinese on the fly. Gives me a chance to show off when I go back home. I look like a bit of a skinhead lout, so Chinese people in the UK are always very surprised when I speak to them in Mandarin. Laughing

Posted: Thu Mar 08, 2007 7:56 am

^^^ of topic I know but what made you move over there?.China strikes me a wonderful yet shit place to live.

Posted: Thu Mar 08, 2007 9:09 am

HA! you hit the nail on the head there mate. Fantastic.

<-------- That's going in my location.

Actually I came out here to best man for a uni mate of mine who married a Chinese girl. I met some of his oz mates at the wedding, who were planning on going up to far Northern China (Heilongjiang Province) to start an English school. They dragged me along and after about two months of throwing fireworks around whilst blind drunk on the -30 degree streets of some shit-raddled industrial town, I got bored and returned to Shanghai and married someone - my wife I think.

It was really fun. I didn't have a single cent to my name. I had about three days worth of hotel money by the time I got back to Shanghai, but fortunately my wife (girlfiend at the time) took me in. I went out and taught English for a while to get some cash together, then I brought a suit and went and got a job as an environmental designer.

You should have heard my mother on the telephone during all this.

Classic.

Posted: Thu Mar 08, 2007 2:56 pm

"doohickey" - I must start using that in my baits Very Happy

Posted: Thu Mar 08, 2007 3:00 pm

^^^ Hey! Keep your doohickey to yourself! Shocked

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