That’s a mold-breaker. Great thinking!

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.

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.

#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?

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.

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!

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.

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.