【10.05.02 纽约时报】上海试图整治扭曲的中式英文
【中文标题】上海试图整治扭曲的中式英文【原文标题】Shanghai Is Trying to Untangle the Mangled English of Chinglish
【登载媒体】纽约时报
【原文作者】ANDREW JACOBS
【原文链接】http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/03/world/asia/03chinglish.html
上海试图治理一些令人困惑的英文翻译，比如“现金回收机”。
对于一些中文水平不高的英语人士来说，在中国的日常生活充满了令人困惑的一系列选择。在银行，有“现金提取”机和“现金回收”机。当地餐厅的菜单上或许会出现类似“油炸灌肠剂”和“大树蘑菇茎鱿鱼”这样的美味，还有一种神秘的止渴饮品叫做“犹太人的耳朵汁”。
如果你吃多了“大树蘑菇茎鱿鱼”，就会发现自己需要更宽松的服装，也就是类似于那种“胖子”和“猪油桶”类型的服装。这种服饰可以在SCAT服装连锁店中找到。
你可以尽情嘲笑这些英文。但是随着2010年世博会在上星期六于上海开幕，7000多万游客将来参观为期6个月的展览。这些独特的被中国人扭曲的英文会被大量地削减。
至少，这是上海语言应用管理委员会在过去两年时间里一直试图完成的一件事。
在600名志愿者和来自政治局的一批英文专家的支持下，委员会已经修正了一万多处公共标志（白白“Teliot”，白白“尿尿区”），重新编写了英文历史介绍文字，还帮助数百家餐厅修改了菜品名称。
这一行动是部分效仿北京在2008年奥运会期间清理英文标志所付出的巨大努力，当时，政府替换了40万个街道标牌、1300份菜单。典型的错误，比如“东大肛门医院”已经改为“东大直肠病医院”；“种族主义公园”被改为“少数民族公园”。
前中国驻美国大使，首都外事办公室主任赵会民说：“树立标牌的目的是提供帮助，而不是娱乐。”他一直在领导语言标准化和严肃化的进程。
虽然与错误英文的战斗算是中国政府的一个功绩，但是，那些所谓中式英文的粉丝们却陷入了绝望。
Oliver Lutz Radtke，这位德国的电台记者可能是世界上最著名的中式英文专家，他说他认为中国应当富有激情地尽量融合英文和中文，形成一种带有时代和生活特征的语言。在他看来，中式英文是一种需要保护的濒临灭绝物种。
Radtke先生说：“如果你把所有的标牌都标准化，那么你不仅仅会剥夺人们在逛公园时得到的小小乐趣，而且还会关闭一扇洞悉中国人心理的窗户。”他编辑了两本画册，汇总了一些搞笑的中文标牌。
Radtke先生唯恐别人认为这纯粹是为了搞笑，他正在海德尔堡大学攻读中式英文的博士学位。
尽管如此，与中式英文为敌的人说，它所引发的笑声让人丢脸。中国社会科学院的英文学者王晓明痛苦地回忆，他的一些外国同事在翻阅一些糟糕的英文标牌图片时所爆发出的狂笑。王先生说：“他们并不是想羞辱我，但是我的确感到不舒服。”他从此后变成了一个无情屠杀中式英文的斗士。
研究中式英文根源的人们认为，很多错误都来源于懒惰和不完善，但被广泛使用的翻译软件。宾夕法尼亚大学中文教授Victor H. Mair说，电子词典金山词霸把中国超市中的“干货”翻译成与性行为有关的粗话，还令人遗憾地把“油炸灌肠”翻译成“油炸灌肠剂”。
尽管不断改进的翻译软件和对英文语法的持续关注已经让中式英文词语增长的速度放缓，但是Mair先生说他平均每天还是会收到5个新样本，都是来自一些相信他擅于分析错误所在的人们。他说：“如果有人能付钱让我做这件事，我愿意毕生从事这项研究。”
Jeffrey Yao是一个与中式英文较劲并且以此挣钱的人，他是一个英文翻译，在上海外国语大学翻译研究生院任教，他正在主持一场英文标牌的驱魔仪式。但是，即使他借助政府法令根除了那些影响极坏的例子——商人们一般不敢忽视委员会的修改意见，但他还是有一些矛盾的心理。他说尽管一些中式英文在西方人看来笨拙又可笑，但它们有时也会产生清爽、抒情的意境。在上海街头徜徉的志愿者们用数码相机记录了很多标牌，他一边迅速翻动着网页上的这些照片，一边说：“有些中式英文具有很强的表达效果，甚至表述得很美妙。这些文字向世人展示出我们中国人是如何理解语言的。”
他举了一个例子。西方公园里用“远离草地”这种方式来警告人们。而中国版本倾向于把大自然人格化，以此来劝阻人们踩踏草坪。比如“小草在睡觉，不要吵醒它”或者“别伤害我，我怕疼”。
Yao先生朗读这些中文时，就像是在品位莎士比亚的十四行诗。他感叹道：“多么可爱啊。”
他指出，这种语言思维方式创造了类似“long time no see”这种从中文“好久不见”逐字翻译过来的短语成为主流英文口语。但是，Yao先生这位在加拿大做了将近20年翻译工作的人也有力所不及的时候。他拿出一张照片，是公园门口向游人展示的入园规定。其中包括禁止洗涤、“净化”衣服，禁止脱水和公共澄清（通便）。（译者注：猜测原意为禁止在公园水域中洗衣服和洗澡）其意令人费解，尤其是最后一个单词，相当粗俗。告示最后更是语出惊人：“因为如果游客不服从员工的管理或违反约束，那么，所有的后果都是令人自豪的。”
尽管他在最近已经改正了这个告示，Yao先生在回忆这件事时还是会厌恶地摇着头。令他恼怒的是，随着世博会的临近，他依然会发现一些可能招惹麻烦的措辞逃过了委员会的审查，比如一个餐厅中的告示“餐具回收一个地方”（原意：把用过的餐具放在这里）。
他说：“有些中式英文的表述是好的，但是我们不是在翻译文学作品。我希望人们看到这些标牌时可以点头表示理解，我不想看到他们哈哈大笑。”
原文：
Shanghai has been trying to harness English translations that sometimes wander, like “cash recyling machine.”
SHANGHAI — For English speakers with subpar Chinese skills, daily life in China offers a confounding array of choices. At banks, there are machines for “cash withdrawing” and “cash recycling.” The menus of local restaurants might present such delectables as “fried enema,” “monolithic tree mushroom stem squid” and a mysterious thirst-quencher known as “The Jew’s Ear Juice.”
Those who have had a bit too much monolithic tree mushroom stem squid could find themselves requiring roomier attire: extra-large sizes sometimes come in “fatso” or “lard bucket” categories. These and other fashions can be had at the clothing chain known as Scat.
Go ahead and snicker, although by last Saturday’s opening of the Expo 2010 in Shanghai, drawing more than 70 million visitors over its six-month run, these and other uniquely Chinese maladaptations of the English language were supposed to have been largely excised.
Well, that at least is what the Shanghai Commission for the Management of Language Use has been trying to accomplish during the past two years.
Fortified by an army of 600 volunteers and a politburo of adroit English speakers, the commission has fixed more than 10,000 public signs (farewell “Teliot” and “urine district”), rewritten English-language historical placards and helped hundreds of restaurants recast offerings.
The campaign is partly modeled on Beijing’s herculean effort to clean up English signage for the 2008 Summer Olympics, which led to the replacement of 400,000 street signs, 1,300 restaurant menus and such exemplars of impropriety as the Dongda Anus Hospital — now known as the Dongda Proctology Hospital. Gone, too, is Racist Park, a cultural attraction that has since been rechristened Minorities Park.
“The purpose of signage is to be useful, not to be amusing,” said Zhao Huimin, the former Chinese ambassador to the United States who, as director general of the capital’s Foreign Affairs Office, has been leading the fight for linguistic standardization and sobriety.
But while the war on mangled English may be considered a signature achievement of government officials, aficionados of what is known as Chinglish are wringing their hands in despair.
Oliver Lutz Radtke, a former German radio reporter who may well be the world’s foremost authority on Chinglish, said he believed that China should embrace the fanciful melding of English and Chinese as the hallmark of a dynamic, living language. As he sees it, Chinglish is an endangered species that deserves preservation.
“If you standardize all these signs, you not only take away the little giggle you get while strolling in the park but you lose a window into the Chinese mind,” said Mr. Radtke, who is the author of a pair of picture books that feature giggle-worthy Chinglish signs in their natural habitat.
Lest anyone think it is all about laughs, Mr. Radtke is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in Chinglish at the University of Heidelberg.
Still, the enemies of Chinglish say the laughter it elicits is humiliating. Wang Xiaoming, an English scholar at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, painfully recalls the guffaws that erupted among her foreign-born colleagues as they flipped through a photographic collection of poorly written signs. “They didn’t mean to insult me but I couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable,” said Ms. Wang, who has since become one of Beijing’s leading Chinglish slayers.
Those who study the roots of Chinglish say many examples can be traced to laziness and a flawed but wildly popular translation software. Victor H. Mair, a professor of Chinese at the University of Pennsylvania, said the computerized dictionary, Jingshan Ciba, had led to sexually oriented vulgarities identifying dried produce in Chinese supermarkets and the regrettable “fried enema” menu selection that should have been rendered as “fried sausage.”
Although improved translation software and a growing zeal for grammatically unassailable English has slowed the output of new Chinglishisms, Mr. Mair said he still received about five new examples a day from people who knew he was good at deciphering what went wrong. “If someone would pay me to do it, I’d spend my life studying these things,” he said.
Among those getting paid to wrestle with Chinglish is Jeffrey Yao, an English translator and teacher at the Graduate Institute of Interpretation and Translation at Shanghai International Studies University who is leading the sign exorcism. But even as he eradicates the most egregious examples by government fiat — businesses dare not ignore the commission’s suggested fixes — he has mixed feelings, noting that although some Chinglish phrases sound awkward to Western ears, they can be refreshingly lyrical. “Some of it tends to be expressive, even elegant,” he said, shuffling through an online catalog of signs that were submitted by the volunteers who prowled Shanghai with digital cameras. “They provide a window into how we Chinese think about language.”
He offered the following example: While park signs in the West exhort people to “Keep Off the Grass,” Chinese versions tend to anthropomorphize nature as a way to gently engage the stomping masses. Hence, such admonishments as “The Little Grass Is Sleeping. Please Don’t Disturb It” or “Don’t Hurt Me. I Am Afraid of Pain.”
Mr. Yao read off the Chinese equivalents as if savoring a Shakespearean sonnet. “How lovely,” he said with a sigh.
He pointed out that this linguistic mentality helped create such expressions as “long time no see,” a word-for-word translation of a Chinese expression that became a mainstay of spoken English. But Mr. Yao, who spent nearly two decades working as a translator in Canada, has his limits. He showed a sign from a park designed to provide visitors with the rules for entry, which include prohibitions on washing, “scavenging,” clothes drying and public defecation, all of it rendered in unintelligible — and in the case of the last item — rather salty English. The sign ended with this humdinger: “Because if the tourist does not obey the staff to manage or contrary holds, Does, all consequences are proud.”
Even though he had had the sign corrected recently, Mr. Yao could not help but shake his head in disgust at the memory. And he was irritated to find that a raft of troublesome sign verbiage had slipped past the commission as the expo approached, including a cafeteria sign that read, “The tableware reclaims a place.” (Translation: drop off dirty dishes here.)
“Some Chinglish expressions are nice, but we are not translating literature here,” he said. “I want to see people nodding that they understand the message on these signs. I don’t want to see them laughing.” 之前看过原文~
特别这几张图，笑得肚疼~ love he mother’s who who who 见过木耳露实物 我见过最好笑的chinglish就是cunt examination giveyou a color see see long time no see 已经被正常化了呢 香辣马克思主义。。。 哈哈，太搞笑了。中式英语还能看懂，正宗英语我可就不懂了 有什么大惊小怪的，英语化的汉语不是也越来越多了吗？ 别给脸不要脸了，没有英文提示你们还能干吗？ 个人还蛮喜欢这种的 想起了long time no see,典型的中文语法啊。。。 这几张图片真是雷人啊 哈哈 我觉得挺有意思的~ 整治了有点可惜了...
还有谁能回答下Good good study,Day day up真的是 好好学习 天天向上的 意思么... 这样搞搞还可以 还有中式英语的博士啊 我觉得图片上的例子不是中式英语 是错误翻译o3O143) 回复 18# iseesee
这个想法很新颖Q20) 笑死我了Q15).不过“种族主义公园”这个翻译真够吓人的.
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