Post #2678856

I got a laugh out of this. While searching for an old article in the NYT, I happened upon this completely unrelated article, which was very amusing. It was about China's efforts to make Beijing more presentable to foreigners in the lead-up to the Olympics. One part was about the hilariously incorrect English translations on signs and ads. "Until recently, the attention paid to the accuracy of the [English] translation was, at best, uneven. Consider that a local theme park about China's ethnic minorities was initially promoted in English as "Racist Park".... Regular blunders include typos on menus in which the 'b' in crab becomes a 'p.' Some translations are trickier, like describing pullet, which is a hen less than a year old but appears on some menus as Sexually Inexperienced Chicken.... One prominent sign had become a regular photo op for foreigners: the Dongda Anus Hospital. [Prof. Tool] intervened. It is now the Dongda Proctology Hospital." [There's a photo of an ad that says, "Pleasanty surprise of groping." The photo caption says, "A better translation of the sign above might be, 'Find something new and be pleasantly surprised.'"] April 17, 2007, New York Times, by Jim Yardley