4 Responses for "If you’re familiar with Chinese, what are some cases of Chinese/English translation misunderstandings?"

1. Xae October 10th, 2009 at 3:55 pm 1

   Wie ben je dokter phil van de taal en wat dialect van het Chinees, zijn er verschillende en alleen omdat u kunt kijken op een vertaling en hebben traditionele Chinese karakters (niet vereenvoudigd, zoals hoe de professionele wereld gebruikt ze), maakt je niet almachtig china Ik zou willen dat je iets anders post we dont care over uw Chinees

2. hereugo October 11th, 2009 at 7:38 pm 2

   Coca-Cola werd op de markt gebracht in China als KE-Kou-KE-La (het betekent beet het het waskikkervisje/paard in Chinees)

   Pepsi lanceerde een Tiawanese commerciële " Kom Levend met Pepsi Generation" > Het kwam uit " Pepsi zal uw voorvaderen van hun graves.&quot opheffen;

   KFC' s Fingerlickin goed werd " Eet uw vingers off"

3. SergioPL October 15th, 2009 at 2:28 am 3

   De Taiwanese mensen spreken mandarin. Ik wens dit ik kon: (

4. Qin_ai_de October 15th, 2009 at 4:59 am 4

   There are some great Chinese sayings that, directly translated into English, are even greater! For example: “?????”? means to do something completely unnecessary. Literally translated, it means “take off your pants to fart”. Another (dirtier) saying is “????”, which is a derogatory involving one’s mother and a dog. Literally translated, it reads “Dog dick day”. Ha! There’s a popular brand of whitening toothpaste in China that translates to “Black People Toothpaste”. That’s wacky. The name Jeff in English is transliterated “Jie fu”, which means brother-in-law. There are some other funny mistakes and stories especially in advertizing. The funniest one that comes to mind (excuse the pun) is a billboard for an interior design firm along the highway near where I live. The name of the design firm in Chinese is “??”, which means “same heart”, or “same mind”. In Chinese, it’s a great name for a design firm because it connotates a working relationship between the designers and the clients- kind of like saying “We have the same thing in mind”. However, it was translated by some bookworm permanently attatched to his Chinese-English dictionary, with no social skills whatsoever, because the English name of the firm (in HUGE red letters- “Look at us! We can even speak English at our firm!”) reads: HOMO MIND!!!!!!!!!! (Hell, who knows, maybe they did it on purpose after watching too many pirated episodes of “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy!”) Hope these made you laugh!
   Jen