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Language and globalization

Give Chinglish a break!

By May 26, 2010May 24th, 201914 Comments2 min read15,889 views

Multilingual sign in Namtso (Image Credit: Wikipedia)

Imagine the New York Times asked readers to send in their favorite blonde jokes or to report the funniest thing they’ve ever seen a person of color do. Now, imagine that once that campaign is underway the blogosphere is full of it and anyone interested in gender or race blogs, facebooks and tweets about it, and even academics in the fields of gender studies and ethnicity studies get all excited and offer analyses as to why blondes or persons of color act in such ridiculous ways.

It’s not going to happen, of course, because such a thing would be outrageously and obscenely sexist or racist. I am thankful that such stuff is no longer part of the mainstream and it’s high time we arrived at a similar understanding of linguistic diversity. Making fun of someone else’s language is just not funny! It’s just as bigoted as sexist or racist jokes – except that it’s unacceptable to express sexism or racism but no one seems to see anything wrong with expressing their linguistic prejudices.

The New York Times recently carried an article about Chinglish, which was for some time their most e-mailed article. Indeed, it created such a reader response and so much buzz in the blogosphere that the newspaper called for readers to send in their own pictures of “strange signs from abroad.” Even an academic blog in the field pitched in by offering a series of analyses to illuminate how “unintentional errors of translation from Chinese result in ludicrous or impenetrable English.”

I have no problem with making fun of ludicrous and pompous signage. What I object to is making fun of the language of signage because it doesn’t meet some native-speaker norm.

Getting the whole world to learn English and simultaneously instilling a perpetual inferiority complex in additional language speakers may make good business sense – to wit, the multi-billion TESOL industry. It’s a perfect exploitative set-up. It’s also perfectly immoral.

The New York Times article is followed by two corrections because they couldn’t get the title of a Chinese informant nor the spelling of a Chinese-English translation software right the first time round. Am I the only one who is seeing the irony?

Ingrid Piller

Author Ingrid Piller

Dr Ingrid Piller, FAHA, is Distinguished Professor of Applied Linguistics at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. Her research expertise is in bilingual education, intercultural communication, language learning, and multilingualism in the context of migration and globalization.

More posts by Ingrid Piller

Join the discussion 14 Comments

  • Nowadays the Chinese government has been taking actions to fight the ‘Chinglish,’ and is rolling out a series of campaign to wipe out these extremely hilarious bad English translations that could be seen in restaurants, hotels, banks, hospitals and on city roads (there is huge list about these funny stuff: https://www.actranslation.com/knowledge/fun/hilarious-translations.htm). They think these are bringing damages to the nation’s reputation. Probably you won’t be seeing these types of funny stuff again in the near future. But till then, we can all still get a good laugh on these very impressive photos surviving forever in the cyberworld.

  • Another interesting blog post about “Chinglish” from 2008 can be found at http://q-pheevr.livejournal.com/2008/07/23/

  • Grace says:

    Sometimes I would imagine if I could save all the time and energy spending on English, would I achieve much more than what I do now in academic? Like I could read a page of Chinese within a few seconds but say ten minutes of English. I may become way much more efficient and knowledgeable with the same effort. However, the worst is the feeling of inferiority. Never good enough and never native-like. When speaking is not only an instinct behavior of expressing ideas, it could be strenuous putting together the linguistic elements.

  • Louisa OKelly says:

    # 2: From my own experience of working with in an accountancy firm that had a predominantly Chinese base – both Mandarin and Cantonese. The office manager thought it would be appropriate given he was accompanying a client – who spoke Cantonese – to an Australian Taxation Seminar in relations to his personal business dealings in Australia. To learn what the appropriate terms for a number he spoke with the multilingual accountants we had and after extensive consultation felt confident. Only to explain, in cantonese, that with-holding tax with the wrong pronunciation whether this was tonal or otherwise I can’t remember could elicit horror from said client and hysterics from our multilingual colleagues (I’ll explain in person some time).

    In another instance, great confusion was caused by the translation into Japanese of a guide to the particular institution. In the infinite wisdom often applied to translation, said institution engaged a well known translation firm who were/are in the habit of hiring native speakers (think pre naati) which to many would A: seem like a good idea and B: would also seem like a good career option for a newly arrived migrant with good conversational English. So all in all it all seemed good. Except that ‘polite English’ terms didn’t quite translate into Japanese with the same effect.

    After a number of complaints from Japanese visitors about the lack of facilities available it soon became apparent that the translation of bathroom had been quite literal – the room in which one bathes. Not where one goes to the toilet.

  • Vahid says:

    Hi,

    You are definitely right Ingrid. If Australians laugh at New Zealanders for saying sex instead of six, that does not seem to occur within Orientalist ways of viewing the other. What we read in NYT’s article seems, however, to be based on the assumption that all eastern societies are similar to one another and dissimilar from western societies.

    Best,

    Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978.

  • Ingrid Piller says:

    Thanks, Louisa! Two comments:

    #1: When Australians laugh at New Zealanders for saying “sex” instead of “six” that does not occur within a tradition of Orientalist ways of viewing the Other so it’s really a different phenomenon. For all your quirky ways of speaking English 😉 no one is doubting your legitimacy as native speakers of English.

    #2: If the Chinese have to get their laughs out of “our interpretations from English to Chinese”, they’d be pretty hard up because there simply isn’t much of that around. How many “Westerners” have attempted to learn Chinese to even be in a position to make mistakes in the first place? How many of “us” are putting up Chinese signage?

  • Louisa OKelly says:

    The funny thing about it, is that ask almost any nation and they can recount errors in translation!

    Let’s be realistic here if we’re going to tackle the New York Times on this issue then perhaps we ought to look more closely at the relationship between humour and racism. Humour often walks the fine line between camaraderie and insult. It’s not like English speaking countries haven’t laughed at others who speak English. In my own experience, the humour in asking a person born in New Zealand how they say six or fish and chips is no different from having a giggle at a person of Chinese decent translating a basic phrase into an unintended phrase. Let’s not fool ourselves that the Chinese haven’t laughed at our interpretations from English to Chinese.

  • Joel says:

    Finally, somebody said it!

    I’ve been thinking hard about how I want to address the concept of Chinglish in my upcoming PhD research. My original proposal was to try to build a better definition of “China English” (which is considered a positive thing in line with Kachruvian WEs stuff) based on readers’ reactions to texts written in China, but the spectre of “Chinglish” (i.e., “bad English in China”) keeps coming up.

    I don’t think it’s wrong to draw attention to the phenomenon, but I think I disagree with the NYT article that there is something especially/uniquely Chinese about badly translated signage. I also think there’s a danger of equating incomprehensible computer translation with the way Chinese people actually speak/use English — in the media, it kind of all blurs together and we’re left with a patronizing view of Chinglish as wrong/funny/cute/special.

    I think maybe the jokes about “Engrish” (www.engrish.com and http://www.engrishfunny.com for example) predate the “Chinglish” phenomenon, but either way there seems to be a real emphasis in (American/western?) media on this view of Asia being the place where they use English incorrectly in a kind of “precious” way.

    Anyway, thanks for addressing this!

  • Jenny Zhang says:

    Thanks Ingrid for your illuminating perspective. I do see the irony.

    In the era of modernity and globalization, one cannot ignore the swift spread of English in world territory. The spread of English as a global language has led to the question of ‘ownership’. Those who are busy learning or teaching English should step back and reflect whom English belongs to. Does it belong to native speakers? Or can it belong to anyone who uses it? If we agree that the principal purpose of learning English today is not solely for communication with ‘native speakers’ but more between speakers from different L1s, then it is hard to justify promoting ‘Standard English” for all purposes, regardless of diverse cultural settings.

    In recent years, many Asian countries like Singapore and China have launched national campaigns to discourage the use of local varieties of English and promote so-called “Standard English” generally modeled on the British or American standard. A closer look at these campaigns will reveal the general assumption of those police makers that the ultimate goal of learning English is to approximate ‘Standard English’ of ‘native speakers.’ However, the very concepts of ‘SE’ and ‘NS’ are problematic and unrealistic. Ingrid has argued in her article (2001) that “every language is characterized by variation, variation by regionality, register, class, gender, age, and even within individuals. English as the most widely used language ever is furthermore characterized by variation.”

    Besides, English, in diverse cultural settings, has increasingly become a medium for expressing culturally and socially unique ideas, feelings, and identities to people in the world, despite of native and non-native speakers. In this way, English serves as both a means of mutual understanding and an identity marker, for example, to distinguish a Ghanaian English speaker from a Chinese English speaker or an Australian English speaker. The terms like ‘Singlish’ and ‘Chinglish’ have been mostly used with deficient and derogatory connotations, since they are judged by an irrelevant and unrealistic ‘Standard English’ norm. Interestingly to note, the launch of the Speak Good English Movement in Singapore has been reportedly unable to effectively eradicate Singlish among Singaporeans. Singlish still remains as a common language among Singaporeans in informal communication. I’m expecting to know what will happen to Chinglish.

  • Mike says:

    Do you think the sign writers would be so offended if you pointed out the funny side to them? I’m proud to give my Japanese friends the opportunity to make fun of my strange Japanese – they’ve had a good laugh at it on almost as many occasions as I’ve teased them about their funny Engrish.

  • Lucy says:

    This is a very good point and I’m glad you wrote about it. We’ve written about Chinglish in the past, because it can also be an opportunity to learn more about differences between Western and Chinese culture. But having experienced for myself the challenge of learning to communicate in a foreign language and the huge amount of effort and determination it takes, I would find it difficult to laugh at someone just because they don’t speak English as I’m used to hearing it.

  • Leo Salazar says:

    Amen!!!

    I’ve resurrected an old blog post of mine from 2007 in which a major, and presumably respectable, Dutch newspaper published a remarkably insensitive jab at speakers of Asian languages with a headline (a HEADLINE!!!) written in a sort of Chinglish. See it here: http://bit.ly/cPAQh5

    It boggles the mind that there are people in positions of influence who are so blind to what damage they are doing. They miss unique opportunities to build and add value for the sake of a cheap joke.

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