Not all Chinese businesspeople are willing to spend money on professional translation. Thus, most signs and labels end up as horrible English translations.
One example is this label in a supermarket in China that reads “A Time Sex Thing.” Looking at the picture, a disposable cup, you might wonder how it is related to the label.
Actually, it’s a word-by-word mistranslation. The person who translated the Chinese phrase “一次性用品” might have looked up each morpheme in a Chinese-English dictionary and picked the shortest or simplest alternative in each case.
In fact, “一次性用品,” if translated right, means “having the nature of single-use” or, in short, “disposable.”
Mharowse San Juan
Latest posts by Mharowse San Juan (see all)
- Chinese Woman Scratches a Car to Force Husband to Buy It - April 17, 2015
- Colorful Murals Bring a Taiwanese Village to Life - April 15, 2015
- Chinese People Work Extremely Hard - April 11, 2015
