Lost-in-translation signs to be cleansed for Olympics

BEIJING — For years, foreigners in China have delighted in the loopy English translations that appear on the nation's signs. They range from the offensive — "Deformed Man," outside toilets for the handicapped — to the sublime — "Show Mercy to the Slender Grass," on park lawns.

Last week, Beijing city officials unveiled a plan to stop the laughter. With hordes of foreign visitors expected in town for the 2008 Summer Olympics, Beijing wants to cleanse its signs of translation nonsense.

For the next eight months, 10 teams of linguistic monitors will patrol the city's parks, museums, subway stations and other public places searching for gaffes to fix.

Already, fans of the genre are mourning the end of an era, and some Web sites dedicated to it have seen traffic spike. The bewildering signs were "one of the great things we want to show people visiting us," says financial-services consultant Josh Kurtzig, a Washington native who lives in Beijing. Correcting them is "really taking away one of the joys of China."

Not many locals share this sense of loss. "We cannot leave [these signs] up just for the amusement of foreigners," says Olive Wang, marketing manager for a sportswear company.

Many in China regard the Olympics as the nation's coming-out party — a milestone in its ascent as a global power. Anticipation of the games is fueling a surge of national pride and has sparked campaigns to make people smile more and embrace better etiquette.

The sign initiative is the latest part of a campaign to improve English translations in public, including on restaurant menus. The group behind the effort, called the Beijing Speaks Foreign Languages Program, is headed by Chen Lin, an elderly language professor who acts as its language police chief.

"We want everything to be correct. Grammar, words, culture, everything," Chen says, whose formal English enunciation would befit a Shakespearean actor. "Beijing will have thousands of visitors coming. We don't want anyone laughing at us."

The sign police will conduct checks "to see if the signs are right," says Beijing Vice Mayor Ji Lin.

In anticipation of the games, Chen set up his group in 2002 with backing from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The group's efforts, he says, will pick up over the next 1 ½ years and will likely involve thousands of city employees and volunteers.

The city has replaced 6,300 road signs that carried bewildering admonitions such as: "To take notice of safe: The slippery are very crafty." (Translation: Be careful, slippery.) Replacing signs will cost the city a substantial amount of money, although its isn't clear how much. Some of the faulty ones, Chen notes, are decades old and carved in marble.

Chen got hooked on English in high school by reading simplified versions of Shakespeare. His interest made him a target during the decadelong Cultural Revolution that began in 1966, when associations with the West were a liability. He was sent off to do hard labor in the countryside.

In 1978, as China began embracing a policy of economic reform and openness, Chen hosted the country's first television program teaching English.

Through the 1980s and 1990s, the popularity of the English language grew faster than the nation's proficiency in it. English words were used on billboards and on clothing to denote exoticism and sophistication — but the words often made no sense.

Chen says that municipal departments sometimes would leave it to employees with only rudimentary English skills and a dictionary to handle translations of public signs.

Chen's Beijing Speaks committee set up a Web site to solicit volunteer translators, part of a parallel effort to provide standardized translations for Chinese menus. In a little over two months, it drew more than 7,000 responses. "People really want to get involved," he says.

These days, Chen regularly cruises the city looking for faulty signs, often in the company of retired Army Col. David Tool, a longtime resident of China. Sometimes, a Beijing television crew accompanies them, documenting the results. Two programs on the topic have aired.

Some of the many Westerners living in Beijing view the disappearance of China's lost-in-translation signs as part of a broader modernization drive that is causing Beijing to lose some of its character. Other foreigners lament the loss of a source of amusement.

Tourists and expatriates have been posting photographs of what has came to be known as "Chinglish" on Internet sites such as chinglish.de. Beijing's sign-improvement efforts appear to be boosting contributions and visitors to the sites.

Some foreigners question whether Beijing authorities should devote such effort to changing signs, given other pre-Olympic concerns such as traffic and pollution woes.

Says longtime resident Jeremy Goldkorn, a South African: "Frankly, I prefer clean toilets to correct English."