Beijing is trying to rid city of Chinglish before 2022 Winter Olympics

One of the greatest things about the language gap between China and the English-speaking world is the comedy generated by mistranslation. We’re all – as denizens of the internet – familiar with the old cliché of the tattoo that doesn’t mean what its owner thinks it does, but just as good are the stream of Chinese to English translations that can be found across various locales in China. Unfortunately, the Chinese Government has decided to crack down on those bad boys and eliminate them before it hosts the Winter Olympics in 2022…

Credit: Fair Use Policy

The proper name for these hilarious mistranslations is Chinglish. It’s kinda English, but it’s been infused with a whack of Chinese – just for comedy’s sake.

Credit: Fair Use Policy

Credit: Fair Use Policy

To be fair to our communist friends, you can understand how these mistakes happen, can’t you? You take a literal translation and it doesn’t quite work so you hit the old right-click button to come up with a synonym and you get a bum-steer. Not knowing any better, you’ve just got to go with it.

Credit: Fair Use Policy

Credit: Fair Use Policy

Of course, the flipside of that is that if you’re running a business, you can probably find someone to tell you what your sign should say. Here at Ozzy Man Reviews, we’re not sure if the inability of the Chinese internet to reach out and connect with the internet frequented by capitalist pigs like us is to blame, but given the benefit of the doubt, we’ll say…um, yeah, maybe. Who the f**k knows, really?

Credit: Fair Use Policy

Credit: Fair Use Policy

Anyway, Beijing’s Foreign Affairs Office reckons its vetted more than two-million Chinese characters on bilingual signs in the last year. They hope to make sure they’ve gotten rid of all the bodgy signs by the time the Winter Olympics rolls around in 2022. They’ve even launched a website that allows residents to dob in ‘Chinglish’ signs around town.

Credit: Fair Use Policy

Credit: Fair Use Policy

Anyway, have a gander at some of these signs and enjoy the chuckles.

Credit: Fair Use Policy

Final thought: Look, on one hand, we understand why Beijing wants to fix these signs. They want to be taken seriously when the world comes in 2022, and we can respect that. Still though, perhaps we should respect the Chinglish culture. After all, we don’t all want to be a bunch of homogenous f**ks, do we?

Just in case you missed it, here’s one of Ozzy’s latest commentary videos…Ozzy Man Reviews: Lion Vs Hyenas

H/T: SHANGHAI.