Hilarious hotel brochure

Not to mention Americans...

Of course, we're really mangling someone ELSE's language.

I have been reading books in English for more than fifty years. In the beginning I liked to read all the books written by one author (e.g. all of Dickens). I found that as I progressed, it was easier, I did not have to look up words in a dictionary. I had learned the vocabulary of this writer. But when I changed to another writer, I had to look up more words, here was another vocabulary. Now if I want to write, I often find, that the right word does not come as readily, as I would have liked it. I then try to make Google translate, but for every Danish word, there is five or six English ones; and Google will too often choose the wrong translation. A dictionary will give you all the possible translations, but you have to have a certain knowledge to choose the right one. A pictorial dictionary is often the best. I understand the problems, that those people have, whose language is completely different to the Western languages.

As a post scriptum: Try to make Google ,or any other translator, translate this into another language, with which you re familiar: FRUT FLIES LIIKE A BANANA. !!!

I didn't say every native speaker was qualified.

I know you didn't. My point obviously got lost in translation!

Do a search on chinglish sometime.

What is chinglish? That's a good question. Wiki (at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinglish ) defines it as: "The term "Chinglish" is commonly applied to ungrammatical or nonsensical English in Chinese contexts".

Examples include:
- emergency exits at the Beijing airport reading "No entry on peacetime"
- "Show Mercy to the Slender Grass"
- a wet wipe labeled "Wet turban needless wash" ( "wash-free moist towel")
- Slip carefully (mistranslation of Xiaoxin huadao (小心滑倒 "Be careful not to slip and fall")
- To take notice of safe: The slippery are very crafty. (translation of :"Pay attention to safety. The ramp is slippery")
- Spread to fuck the fruit (translation of ""loose dried fruits" that is found in many grocery stores)
- "Fried enema" on a menu mistranslates zha guanchang (炸灌腸 "fried sausage [with flour stuffed into hog casings])"

As to how theses signs were mistranslated, the wiki page goes into great detail explaining how these are perfectly understandable mistakes.

Goodgulf

It made perfect sense to me. I work for a Chinese Show and one of my duties is to translate Chinglish into acceptable English. I laugh a lot. I also frequently have to ask, "What are you really trying to say."

I don't know about translators, but many authors have written brilliantly in language other than their own. Stanislaw Lem comes to mind, at least some of the English versions of his novels ar his own translations. Vladimir Nabokov wrote Lolita and other masterworks in English, although this was not his first language. R. K. Narayan's native language was Hindi (although his was a bilingual household) but he was famed as an author in English Sholem Aleichem wrote in both Russian and Hebrew before becoming famous as an author of Yiddish. There are many other examples

Joseph Conrad.

What a cushy job! Any hiring possible these days?