The front cover of the tourist map of multilingual Macau

Last week I had the privilege of visiting the University of Macau and in Macau I discovered yet another unique variation on the many multilingual landscapes we have featured here on Language on the Move.

Macau, a former Portuguese colony, has been a Special Administrative Region of China since 1999. The official languages of Macau are Chinese and Portuguese. English plays an unofficial but highly prominent role: it is the medium of instruction at the University of Macau and at a number of secondary schools. Other schools use Cantonese as medium of instruction and there is one Portuguese-medium school.

Trilingualism in Chinese, Portuguese and English is just the beginning, though. The linguistic situation is further complicated by the diversity of Chinese and the importance of the tourism industry.

The version of Chinese that is local to Macau is Cantonese but Putonghua is gaining in importance. Macau has about half a million residents but welcomes a staggering number of tourists: close to 30 million tourists visit Macau each year. Most of these come from Mainland China and so it is not surprising that in tourism spaces I overheard much more Putonghua than Cantonese. Written Chinese, too, comes in at least three varieties: traditional characters, simplified characters and pinyin. Furthermore, pinyin looks different depending on whether the writer followed English-based or Portuguese-based conventions.

The languages of other tourist markets also feature with maps and signs in Japanese, Korean and Thai.

The linguistic landscape of Macau is thus extremely diverse and each tourist site has its own conventions, as the following examples demonstrate.

A-Ma Temple

Chinese inscriptions at the A-Ma Temple

The famous Taoist temple dedicated to the goddess of seafarers, Matsu, from which the name “Macau” is thought to derive, is enlisted on the UNESCO World Heritage List. On the day we visited it was crowded with Chinese tour groups. The languages on display were ancient Chinese inscriptions in stones and on the temple façades. The prayer tablets where the devout can record their wishes and prayers also seemed to be Chinese only (although there were hundreds of them so I cannot be sure that prayers in other languages were not also hidden away somewhere).

The direction and prohibition signs were either in Chinese only or in Chinese and English (of the non-standardized “Chinglish” variety). One stall selling incense sticks and other devotionalia featured Chinese and Thai signs. Portuguese and what might be called “standard English” were notable for their absence.

Our Lady of Penha Church

Latin and Chinese on a devotional card at La Penha Church

One of Macau’s many Catholic churches (Macau used to be the staging post for the Christianisation of East Asia and has the largest number of Catholic churches by square mile in Asia), Penha Church sits on a hill and affords an excellent view over the harbour and across the bay to the mainland. The church itself is not a tourist destination but the spiritual centre of a community of Trappist nuns from Indonesia.

When we visited, the church was empty. Outside, there were a few newly-wed couples in Western wedding garb who were out to have their pictures taken. As far as I could hear, they received their instructions from the photographers on how to pose in Cantonese.

The languages on the signage could not have been more different from the A-Ma Temple: inscriptions on the façade were also monolingual but monolingual in Portuguese rather than Chinese. Signs about the code of conduct came in three language combinations: Chinese-Only, Chinese-English and English-Chinese.

Signage relating to the spiritual life of the church was either predominantly in Chinese or English, with one or the other language predominating and a few expressions in the other interspersed. To my great surprise, I also discovered some Latin slogans on devotional cards. A collection box, which looked quite old and featured Portuguese, Chinese and English suggests that the English presence in Macau predates the tourism boom and globalized signage of the past decade.

Mandarin House

Trilingual poster at the Mandarin House about 盛 世 危 言 (Warning to a Prosperous Age)

The so-called “Mandarin House” is another UNESCO World Heritage listed building. It used to be the residence of the Qing dynasty reformer Zheng Guanying. When we visited, the building was deserted and other than the attendants we were the only people present making it a very serene space. Information and prohibition signs were relatively standardized and trilingual in Chinese, Portuguese and English although some prohibition signs were more haphazard and contained only Chinese and English.

What was most interesting was the posters about Zheng Guanying’s book Words of Warning to a Prosperous Age (Shengshi weiyan 盛 世 危 言). What little information about the book I could gather from the information panels suggests that it is a highly relevant text for Intercultural Communication Studies. One website sums up the argument as follows:

As a famous reformer of late Qing China, Zheng Guanying was the earliest advocate of representative and participatory political system in the 1870s, the earliest to call for “commercial warfare ” against Western economic imperialism, and one of the earliest to seriously study international law and its relevance to China’s national identity and foreign relations. He was also one of the earliest Chinese to emphasize the combination of Western medicine and Chinese medicine.

His ideas continue to be highly influential in contemporary China and a translation of Shengshi weiyan would be highly desirable. Unfortunately, I have not been able to discover an English translation. I hope this is not another case of “no translation;” if it is, a translation would be highly desirable not only for Chinese Studies but also for Intercultural Communication Studies.

Casinos

Official trilingual “no smoking” sign

A discussion of the touristic linguistic landscape of Macau would not be complete without reference to the casinos because that is where most of the 30 million annual visitors are headed. I got to visit two of them: the Venetian, which is operated by the Las Vegas-based Sands corporation and is an imitation of the Las Vegas Venetian, and City of Dreams, a joint venture between the Macau casino dynasty Ho and the Australian billionaire James Packer. Before anyone gets the wrong idea, the gambling areas occupy only a relatively small part of the casinos and while that is obviously where the action is, I did not enter.

Casino resorts are intended to be spectacular and novel. The Venetian, for instance, looks like a cross between a baroque church and Venetian canals and plazas and City of Dreams features a huge fish tank with (digital) mermaids. However, when it comes to signage there is no trace of the spectacular and unique. In both casinos, commercial signage was completely standardized in the non-language of other global consumer spaces. Direction signs were also standardized in Chinese and English.

Portuguese, by contrast, only had a tiny presence on state-mandated signs, particularly the ubiquitous no-smoking signs, which are in Chinese, Portuguese and English. The biggest surprise were the emergency exit signs: they did not contain any English and were in Portuguese and Chinese only.

Linguistic Pragmatism

Analysts of multilingualism in Macau have described multilingualism in Macau as “an illusion” because official societal Chinese-Portuguese bilingualism is rarely undergirded by individual bilingualism. Indeed, all the people I had extended conversations with were either English speakers from Australia, UK and the USA or Putonghua speakers from Mainland China and Taiwan. With three exceptions none of these had learnt either of the two official languages (the exceptions being an American and a Tawainese who had learnt Cantonese and an Australian who had learnt Portuguese).

Despite the amazing multilingualism in the public signage it may thus well be that the various language communities largely keep themselves to themselves. The fact that each space I visited has its own language practices with regard to signage seems to point in the same direction. If so, it is a pragmatic approach that seems to work perfectly well as a way to manage linguistic diversity and public communication with multiple audiences.

Africa Town, Guangzhou (Source: ChinaSmack)

What does an urban middle-class male university graduate from Conakry, the capital of Guinea, have in common with a peasant woman with little education from a village in Sichuan? Well, both are caught up in the processes of globalization and find themselves as semi-legal migrants with limited resources in Guangzhou’s Africa Town. “Africa Town” is the name of two suburbs in Guangzhou where the largest community of Africans in Asia resides. According to this photo essay on ChinaSmack, there were around 20,000 Africans registered there in 2011. The number of Africans estimated to come there for short business visits and those without a legal status was assumed to be about ten times that number.

Africans come to Guangzhou to trade: at one end of the spectrum there is the so-called “luggage bag trade,” which involves an African community pooling their financial resources. A member of the group then travels to China and purchases as many goods as possible. These are then shipped back home and sold on for a profit. At the other end of the spectrum of African traders in Guangzhou are more established people who run their own shops, catering to bulk buyers, including the luggage bag traders.

The retailers of Africa Town do not only include Africans but also rural Chinese migrants whose status is as semi-legal as that of their African peers if they don’t have an urban hukou (residence permit) for Guangzhou.

It is in this “marginal space in a peripheral country” (Han 2013, p. 95), that Huamei Han, a sociolinguistic ethnographer, met Ibrahim, the university graduate from Conakry, and Laura, the villager from Sichuan, as part of her project to study multilingualism in this high-contact situation.

English, as the global language of business, plays an in important role in Africa Town. So does Mandarin as the national language. Additionally, Cantonese, the local language and a number of other Chinese vernaculars are widely used in Africa Town, as are a number of African languages, including colonial languages such as French. So, there are a lot of codes being used in Africa Town but the preeminent power codes are English and Mandarin.

However, access to formal instruction in these power codes is rare and African Towners have to find other ways to learn whatever they can of these languages. As a result a contact variety, which locals call “Chinglish,” has developed. According to Han (2013, p. 88) this kind of “Chinglish” (not to be confused with unidiomatic Chinese English signage Westerns like to make fun of) is characterized by simple English vocabulary and sentence structures, repetition of key words, the mixing of Mandarin expressions, and the influence of Chinese syntax.

Africa Town, Guangzhou (Source: ChinaSmack)

It is this variety that Ibrahim mostly used, in addition to French, Susu, Pular, Mandinka and Arabic. However, his impressive multilingual repertoire was of relatively limited value without access to Chinese, as he explained to the researcher:

“Some factory they speak no French, they speak no English. So no Chinese, no business!” (p. 90).

However, immediate financial pressures in conjunction with a restrictive visa regime meant that his dream to attend formal Chinese language classes was beyond his grasp.

Laura, by contrast, felt she needed English to extend her business opportunities. However, formal English language instruction was out of her reach, too. Instead, she mobilized personal relationships and networks to acquire English, including the pursuit of transnational romantic relationships.

As Han points out, globalization is often conceived as associated with “elite multilingualism” where “the global person” is supposed to be highly proficient in standard varieties of the languages involved. However, access to these power codes depends upon economic capital: in order to study a language formally, you need to have money, time and legal status.

The inhabitants of African Town who Han spoke to had none of these and their structural marginalization thus also resulted in their linguistic marginalization. Even so, their informal language learning – the grassroots multilingualism of the inhabitants of Africa Town – is locally meaningful and enables their livelihoods in this space characterized by “globalization from below.”

Han, Huamei (2013). Individual Grassroots Multilingualism in Africa Town in Guangzhou: The Role of States in Globalization International Multilingual Research Journal, 7, 83-97

Multilingual sign in Namtso (Image Credit: Wikipedia)

Italian version of my blog post about Chinglish. Translated by Emanuela Moretto

Per un attimo provate a pensare che il New York Times abbia chiesto ai propri lettori di inviare barzellette sulle classiche oche giulive, oppure di riportare un episodio divertente che aveva per protagonista una persona di colore. Bene, adesso provate ad immaginare che a seguito della richiesta la blogosfera sia stata bombardata da messaggi e che tutti coloro che si interessano di differenze tra i sessi o tra le etnie abbiano creato un blog o abbiano mandato il proprio contributo su facebook o twitter e che persino gli studiosi nel campo improvvisamente si siano animati ed abbiano proposto analisi sul perché le sopracitate oche giulive o le persone di colore si comportino in una maniera così assurda.

In realtà, ciò non potrebbe succedere, semplicemente perché sarebbe palesemente ed oscenamente sessista o razzista. Ed infatti tiro un sospiro di sollievo che queste cose non facciano più parte della mainstream. Quindi è anche arrivato il momento di giungere allo stesso risultato dal punto di vista della diversità linguistica. Chiariamo subito una cosa: il prendersi gioco di un’altra lingua non è un gioco! Infatti non è altro che una riprova della stessa mentalità ristretta che si ritrova nelle barzellette sulla differenza tra i sessi o tra le etnie, con la piccola eccezione che mentre si considera inaccettabile l’espressione del sessimo o del razzismo, a nessuno viene in mente di eccepire qualcosa quando sono espressi dei pregiudizi a carattere linguistico.

Il New York Times ha pubblicato di recente un articolo intitolato Chinglish, ovvero ‘cinglese’, che per qualche tempo è stato anche l’articolo che ha ricevuto il numero maggiore di email-commento. La reazione da parte dei lettori è stata tale, e tale anche la circolazione di commenti nella blogosfera, che il giornale ha chiesto ai lettori di inviare immagini di “cartelli stranieri e strani”. Persino un blog accademico del campo si è offerto di illuminare i lettori dibattendo sul perché e sul percome “gli errori di traduzione dalla lingua cinese risultino in una versione inglese ridicola o addirittura incomprensibile”.

Non riscontro nessun problema nel ridicolizzare cartelli ridicoli e e dal linguaggio pomposo. Ma vedo un problema quando ci si prende gioco della lingua utilizzata nel cartello solo perché, apparentemente, non corrisponde alla norma linguistica seguita dai madrelingua.

Che il mondo intero si metta ad imparare l’inglese ed allo stesso tempo ne derivi un perenne complesso di inferiorità ha certamente senso dal punto di vista commerciale – ne è la riprova, l’industria multimiliardaria del TESOL. È un sistema aperto allo sfruttamento. È anche del tutto immorale.

L’articolo del New York Times è seguito da due errate corrige; la prima per non aver riportato in modo corretto il titolo di un lettore cinese e la seconda per aver sbagliato a scrivere il nome di un programma di software per la traduzione cinese-inglese. E allora sono l’unica a vedere l’ironia di tutto questo?

Multilingual sign in Namtso (Image Credit: Wikipedia)

Persian version of my recent blog post about Chinglish
Translated by Tahmineh Tayebi (تهمینه طیبی) & Vahid Parvaresh (وحید پرورش)

تصور کنید که روزنامه ی نیویورک تایمز از خواننده های خود بخواهد خنده دار ترین لطیفه ایی که در مورد افرادِ موبور  شنیده اند را برای روزنامه بفرستند و یا خنده دار ترین کاری که دیده اند شخصی با رنگ پوست و نژاد متفاوت انجام داده را برای روزنامه گزارش کنند. و حالا تصور کنید که قبل از اینکه این اقدامات مسیر کامل خود را طی کند،  دنیای وبلاگ ها از این گزارش ها پر شود و هر کسی که به نژاد و جنسیت علاقه مند است در وبلاگش چیزی نوشته ویا اینکه در فیسبوک وتویتر ذکری از آن به میان آورد و حتی مراکز دانشگاهی در زمینه ی مطالعات نژادی و جنسیت همگی از این پیشنهاد به وجد آمده و تجزیه و تحلیل هایی ارائه دهند مبنی بر این که چرا افراد موبور یا آن هایی که رنگ پوست و نژاد متفاوت دارند چنین رفتار مسخره ایی از خود نشان می دهند.

البته این موضوع قرار نیست رخ دهد چرا که چنین چیزی به طور وقیحانه و شرم آوری نژاد پرستانه یا تبعیض جنسیتی به شمار خواهد رفت. من خوشحالم  که چنین مسایلی دیگر قسمتی از تفکرات رایج و غالب  نیست و اکنون دیگر زمان آن رسیده که ما به درک مشابهی از گوناگونی و اختلاف های زبانی نیز برسیم. مسخره کردن زبانِ یک شخص اصلا خنده دار نیست! بلکه به اندازه ی شوخی های نژاد پرستانه و جنسیتی متعصبانه  است با این تفاوت که بیان کردن تبعیضات جنسیتی و نژادی غیر قابل قبول است. اما این چنین که به نظر می آید هیچ کس هیچ مشکلی با اظهار کردن تعصباتِ زبانیِ خود نمی بیند.

روزنامه نیویورک تایمز اخیرا مقاله ایی درباره چینگلیش (انگلیسیِ چینی ها) به چاپ رساند که برای مدتی بیشترین مقاله ی ایمیل شده ی آن ها بود. در واقع این مقاله چنان مورد توجه خوانندگان قرار گرفت و چنان سر و صدایی  در دنیای وبلاگ ها ایجاد کرد که از مردم خواسته شد تصاویر شخصی خود از “نشانه هایِ عجیبِ خارج” را برای آن روزنامه بفرستند. حتی یک وبلاگ دانشگاهی نیز در این زمینه دست به کار شد تا با ارائه ی یک سری تجزیه و تحلیل، این موضوع را که “چگونه اشتباهات غیر عمد در ترجمه های عبارات چینی منجر به انگلیسیِ مضحک و غیر قابل فهم می شود” روشن کند.

من هیچ مشکلی با مسخره کردن نشانه های اغراق آمیز و خنده دار ندارم. مسئله ایی که مورد اعتراض من است به سُخره گرفتن زبان آن نشانه ها ست آن هم صرفا به این علت که زبان آن نشانه ها با استانداردهای بعضی از بومیان هماهنگ نیست.

وادار کردن تمام جهان به یادگیری زبان انگلیسی و در عین حال تزریق آهسته ی یک عقده ی حقارتِ همیشگی به افرادی که به زبان های دیگر صحبت می کنند ممکن است به لحاظ تجاری، یعنی برای صنعت چند میلیارد دلاری آموزش زبان انگلیسی ، با مفهوم باشد ولی در اصل یک حُقه ی استثماری محض بوده و کاملا غیر اخلاقی است.

مقاله مذکور در روزنامه نیو یورک تایمز با دو اصلاح همراه شد چرا که هیأت تحریریه نتوانسته بود لقب یک منبعِ آگاهِ چینی و هم چنین املایِ صحیحِ یک نرم افزارِ ترجمه ی انگلیسی-چینی را در اولین دورِ چاپ خود درست در بیاورد. آیا من تنها فردی هستم که این طنزِ ظریف را دریافته است؟

Multilingual sign in Namtso (Image Credit: Wikipedia)

Korean version of my recent blog post about Chinglish

Translated by Sun-Young Chung (정선영)

뉴욕타임즈가 독자들로부터 그들의 재미난 금발머리 농담이나 유색인종 사람과 관련된 배꼽 잡는 얘깃거리를 받아 싣겠노라고 했다고 상상해보자. 이제, 그러한 캠페인이 진행되면서 블로그 세계는 네티즌들의 이러한 얘기들로 가득 차고, 성별이나 인종 블로그에 관심 있는 사람이라면 누구나 페이스북이나 트위터 등을 통해 그것에 대해 얘기하며, 성별이나 민족성 분야의 학자들 또한 격분하여 금발머리 여자나 유색인종들이 왜 그렇게 우스꽝스럽게 묘사되어야 하는 지에 대해 분석한다고 상상해보자.

그러한 일은 말도 안되게 터무니없이 성차별적이고 인종차별적이기 때문에 당연히 일어나지 않을 것이다. 그러한 것들이 더 이상은 주류의 일부가 아니고 우리가 언어적 다양성의 인정 면에서도 유사한 정점에 이르렀다는 사실에 난 감사한다. 누군가의 언어에 대해 조롱하는 것은 정말이지 하나도 재미있지 않다! 그것은 성차별적 또는 인종차별적 농담만큼이나 편견적이고 편협적이다. 단 성차별이나 인종차별에 대한 발언은 용납되지 않아도 언어 편견적인 발언에 대해서는 아무도 이상하게 여기지 않는다는 점을 제외하고선 말이다.

뉴욕타임즈는 최근에 중국식 영어(칭글리쉬)에 대한 기사를 실었는데, 한 동안 이 기사는 가장 많이 이메일로 전달되기도 했다. 사실, 이 기사는 독자들로 하여금 “해외에서 찍은 이상한 표지판”에 관한 자신의 사진을 신문에 투고할 것을 요청하여 독자들로부터 수많은 회신을 받았고, 블로그 세계에서도 파문을 일으켰다. 관련분야의 학문적 블로그들 조차도 어떻게 “중국어에서의 의도치 않은 번역의 오류가 터무니없고 불가해한 영어를 만들어내는지” 밝혀내기 위해 일련의 분석을 늘어놓으며 가세했다.

터무니없고 거만한 표지판을 조롱하는 것에 대해서는 난 전혀 문제삼지 않는다. 내가 반대하는 것은 표지판의 언어가 몇몇 원어민의 표준에 맞지 않는다고 하여 그것에 대해 조롱하는 것이다.

세상 전체로 하여금 영어를 배우게 하면서 동시에 추가 언어 화자들에게 끊임없이 열등의식을 주입시키는 것은 기업을 증대시키는데, 더 정확히 말해서, 수십억 TESOL 산업을 발전시키는 데에 중요한 것일지도 모른다. 그것은 완벽한 착취의 체제이다. 그것은 또한 완벽하게 비도덕적이다.

이 뉴욕타임즈 기사는 처음 게시할 때 중국인 제보자의 직위와 중국어-영어 번역 소프트웨어의 철자를 바르게 쓰지 않아서 두 번이나 수정되었다. 여기서 아이러니를 보는 사람이 나뿐일까?

Multilingual sign in Namtso (Image Credit: Wikipedia)

Malay version of my recent blog post about Chinglish

Translated by Ridwan Wahid

Bayangkan sekiranya akhbar New York Times meminta pembacanya menghantar ‘blonde jokes’ kegemaran mereka ataupun melaporkan karenah-karenah paling lucu yang pernah mereka saksikan yang melibatkan orang-orang kulit berwarna. Sekiranya kempen ini benar terjadi, sudah tentulah alam blogosfera akan dipenuhi dengan lawak jenaka sebegini dan sudah tentulah sesiapa saja yang berminat dalam pengajian gender atau perhubungan kaum akan mengupas perihal peristiwa ini di dalam blog, facebook dan tweeter, sehinggakan ahli akademik daripada bidang-bidang yang sama akan turut sama teruja dan mengutarakan pelbagai analisa kenapa wanita berambut perang atau orang kulit berwarna boleh berkelakuan aneh sebegitu rupa.

Kita bernasib baik kerana perkara sedemikian tentu saja tidak akan berlaku. Jika ianya berlaku sekalipun, sudah tentu ia akan dilabelkan sebagai seksis ataupun berbaur perkauman. Saya bersyukur kerana perkara sebegitu bukan lagi menjadi suatu kebiasaan dan rasa saya sudah sampai masanya untuk kita memahami dalam kaedah yang sama kenapa kita perlu ada kepelbagaian linguistik. Mengejek bahasa seseorang adalah tidak lucu langsung! Ianya sebenarnya sama saja sempit dan sama saja prejudis seperti lawak jenaka yang seksis atau berbaur perkauman – cuma, walaupun isu ’sexism’ dan ’racism’ sememangnya dianggap salah, tidak ramai pula yang menganggap prejudis dalam penggunaan bahasa itu adalah satu kesalahan yang sama saja beratnya.

Baru-baru ini, New York Times menyiarkan satu artikel mengenai Chinglish, dan untuk beberapa ketika ianya menjadi artikel yang paling kerap disebarkan melalui emel oleh pembaca akhbar tersebut. Sememangnya artikel ini telah menerima satu respon yang luarbiasa daripada pembacanya dan ianya juga telah menjadikan alam blogofesra berdengung dengan cerita mengenainya sehinggakan akhbar tersebut terdorong untuk meminta pembacanya menghantar gambar yang menunjukkan “papan tanda aneh dari luar negara.” Malah, terdapat satu blog akademik yang turut sama menyahut seruan akhbar tersebut dengan mengutarakan beberapa analisa untuk menerangkan bagaimana “kesilapan penterjemahan dari bahasa Cina yang tidak sengajakan boleh membawa kepada maksud yang aneh dan salah.”

Saya tidak ada masalah untuk mempersendakan papan tanda yang ganjil dan janggal bunyinya. Apa yang saya bantah ialah mempersendakan bahasa dalam papan tanda tersebut kerana kononnya ia tidak memenuhi suatu standard penutur asli.

Menjadikan seluruh dunia belajar bahasa Inggeris dan pada masa yang sama menyemai dalam penutur bukan asli rasa rendah diri merupakan langkah yang baik untuk memajukan perniagaan, iaitu industri TESOL yang bernilai berbilion-bilion dolar. Ianya merupakan satu perancangan yang eksploitatif. Ianya juga satu perlakuan yang sungguh tidak bermoral.

Artikel New York Times tersebut diikuti dengan dua pembetulan kerana khabarnya mereka tidak berjaya memperolehi gelaran yang betul untuk salah seorang pemberi maklumat mereka yang berbangsa Cina dan juga ejaan yang betul untuk nama perisian penterjemahan Cina ke Bahasa Inggeris semasa artikel tersebut dicetak. Saya seorangkah yang dapat melihat ironinya di sini?

Multilingual sign in Namtso (Image Credit: Wikipedia)

Japanese version of my recent blog post about Chinglish

Translated by Kimie Takahashi　（高橋　君江）

このシナリオを想像してみてください。もしNew Yorkタイムズがブロンド女性を馬鹿にするジョークや黄色人種の面白エピソードを募集したとしたらどうでしょうか？さらにその応募キャンペーンが盛り上がり、ブログや Facebookやツイッターでそれが出回り、さらには、ジェンダー、エスニックの学者達がそれを取り上げ、「なぜブロンド女性や黄色人種はこんな馬鹿な ことをするのか」などと分析しだしたりしたらどうなるでしょうか？

もちろんこのシナリオは起こらないはず。そんな事はあきらかに性差別そして人種差別行為にあたるからです。私たちはジェンダーと人種の議論に関 しては、かなりの進歩を遂げてきました。今、その教訓を言語にも生かすべきだと思います。言語を馬鹿にするということは決して「面白い事」ではありませ ん。性差別、人種差別と同等の事です。しかし、他の差別は「だめ！」と思っている方が多い中、言語差別はいまだに広く存在しています。

New Yorkタイムズは最近「Chinglish -　チングリッシュ」という記事を掲載しました。とても大きな反響があったため、さらに「外国の変な掲示」を募集しました。アカデミッ クなブログでさえ「なぜ中国語からの不注意な翻訳が変な英語になってしまうのか」という分析まで登場しました。

個人的に、「変な掲示」を皮肉るのは問題ありません。私が問題 と感じるのは、「ネイティブスピーカーのスタンダード」と違うものを馬鹿にする事です。英語を習え習えとまくし立てながら、同時にコンプレッ クスを植えつける。それが年商何兆円というTESOL業界のやり方です。まさに悪徳。そして倫理に欠ける行為です。

実は、New Yorkタイムズは二度ほど間違いの訂正を発表しています。なにやら、中国人の方の役職そして中国語・英語の翻訳ソフトウェアのつづりを間違えたとか。それに皮肉を感じているのは私だけでしょうか？

Multilingual sign in Namtso (Image Credit: Wikipedia)

Chinese version of my recent blog post about Chinglish

Translated by Zhang Jie (张洁); 译文：张洁

设想某日《纽约时报》向读者征集最喜爱的金发女郎笑话[1]或者有色人种所做的最滑稽的事。再设想该活动开展后迅速充斥了整个网络空间，任何对性别或种族问题有所兴趣的人都在博客、facebook和微博上热烈讨论着，甚至连从事性别和种族研究的学者们也开始群情激昂地对金发女郎或有色人种的荒谬行径提供种种分析。

当然，这种宣扬性别歧视和种族主义的极端恶劣事件不会发生。我庆幸这种内容不再融入主流文化，同时也呼吁到了为语言的多样性正名的时候。嘲笑他人的语言实无风趣可言。其本质就如同那些低劣的性别歧视或种族主义玩笑一样 — 只不过性别歧视和种族主义如今已不被人接受，但对语言发表一些成见却似乎仍无伤大雅。

《纽约时报》近日刊登了一篇有关中式英语的新闻，一时成为电邮转载率最高的文章。由于这篇文章引起的读者关注度以及在博客空间造成的极大反响，《纽约时报》决定向读者征集有关“千奇百怪的国外标识”的照片，甚至创建了学术博客提供一系列专业分析，阐释“汉英翻译中一些无心之失如何造成了令人捧腹或费解的英语译文。”

取乐于荒诞滑稽和矫揉造作的标识，无可厚非。但是，仅仅因为不符合所谓的母语规范而嘲弄标识上的语言，我不能苟同。

发动全世界人学习英语并灌输给所有英语学习者无法消解的自卑感，对利润丰厚的外语教育产业来说也许意味着无限商机。但我们需清醒地认识到，这是一个完美的剥削陷阱，这也是完全不道德的。

《纽约时报》的这篇文章后紧接着刊登了两则纠正信息，因为该报社没能在第一时间弄清楚一位中国受访者的现任职务以及某个汉英翻译软件的正确拼写。是否只有我看到了一丝讽刺的意味呢？

[1] 金发女郎笑话（blonde joke）是欧美的一种笑话类别，专门嘲弄金发女郎的愚蠢行为。这类笑话的主人公多为女性，僵化了人们对金发女郎的刻板印象，有明显的性别歧视色彩，遭到了广泛的批评。

Multilingual sign in Namtso (Image Credit: Wikipedia)

Imagine the New York Times asked readers to send in their favorite blonde jokes or to report the funniest thing they’ve ever seen a person of color do. Now, imagine that once that campaign is underway the blogosphere is full of it and anyone interested in gender or race blogs, facebooks and tweets about it, and even academics in the fields of gender studies and ethnicity studies get all excited and offer analyses as to why blondes or persons of color act in such ridiculous ways.

It’s not going to happen, of course, because such a thing would be outrageously and obscenely sexist or racist. I am thankful that such stuff is no longer part of the mainstream and it’s high time we arrived at a similar understanding of linguistic diversity. Making fun of someone else’s language is just not funny! It’s just as bigoted as sexist or racist jokes – except that it’s unacceptable to express sexism or racism but no one seems to see anything wrong with expressing their linguistic prejudices.

The New York Times recently carried an article about Chinglish, which was for some time their most e-mailed article. Indeed, it created such a reader response and so much buzz in the blogosphere that the newspaper called for readers to send in their own pictures of “strange signs from abroad.” Even an academic blog in the field pitched in by offering a series of analyses to illuminate how “unintentional errors of translation from Chinese result in ludicrous or impenetrable English.”

I have no problem with making fun of ludicrous and pompous signage. What I object to is making fun of the language of signage because it doesn’t meet some native-speaker norm.

Getting the whole world to learn English and simultaneously instilling a perpetual inferiority complex in additional language speakers may make good business sense – to wit, the multi-billion TESOL industry. It’s a perfect exploitative set-up. It’s also perfectly immoral.

The New York Times article is followed by two corrections because they couldn’t get the title of a Chinese informant nor the spelling of a Chinese-English translation software right the first time round. Am I the only one who is seeing the irony?