Still Chinglish we speak here

Travelers to China will note with some humor that neither English nor Chinese seems to be written or spoken there. Instead, “Chinglish” or “China English” is, according to wikipedia, “used” by an estimated 300 to 500 million users and/or learners of English there. And unlike Pidgen English which is a language that can actually be learned, “Chinglish” is simply English with really bad spelling and grammar or a bad (sometimes literal) translation or confusion over the translation of Chinese characters into English.

When Beijing hosted the Olympics, an effort was made to try and rid the city of “Chinglish” while the Luxique travel blog has recently noted that Shanghai, which is gearing up for the World Expo fair next year, will attempt to do the same by having student volunteers check all the English on signs throughout the city and if they deem the translation to be less than accurate, whoever owns the sign will need to correct it.

Either way, travelers will generally find Chinglish to be more amusing than annoying. Hence, here are some classic examples of Chinglish (some with pictures) that may or may not need some “translation”:

• In the hotel elevator: “Please bump your head carefully.”
• Keep off the grass: “Tender fragrant grass. How hardhearted to trample them”
• A slippery slope: “To take notice of safe: The slippery are very crafty.”
• In the hotel lobby: “Please leave your values at the front desk.”
• On the subway: “If you are stolen, call the police at once.”
• “F*** the Certain Price of Goods.” (This translation apparently resulted from some confusion over the characters for “dry” and “to do”)
• Lost in translation:

• When closing the door: “Please Steek Gently” (Apparently, to steek is means “to shut” in a dialect of Scottish and the word found its way into a Chinese-English dictionary):

• We hope this means the surface is only slippery: