Mistranslation of the day.

[randomness]

Engrish.com has this photo:



I think what's going on is that 无公害 (wú gōng hài) as "non-public nuisance". I would literally translate 无公害 as something more like "without public threat", but clearly someone's machine translation is going haywire. A bit of net research seems to show that "无公害" is a Chinese legal term of art with accompanying certification for products and origination.

Possibly the right idiomatic translation in English is "green", or maybe "organic", but I'm not sure exactly because I don't know what the certification regulations say.

Comments

[intuition-ist.livejournal.com]

...and why on earth are they using machine translation for mass-produced packaging? y'd think they'd pass it by a Real Live English-speaking Person before doing that run of 10,000 (100,000?) egg packages. are RLEPeople that rare and/or expensive?

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

are RLEPeople that rare and/or expensive?

Yes.

Generally, RLEPeople--I like that term--are gainfully employed doing something other than translating package copy.

Machine translation is easy and cheap.

[marginaleye.livejournal.com]

Maybe these manufacturers are secretly getting paid by the Engrish Funny people to provide a steady stream of content.

Am I correct in assuming that native speakers of Chinese find equal amounts of amusement in badly-translated English-to-Chinese on packaging over there?

[digitalemur.livejournal.com]

Mmm, funny tattoos worn by Gaijin who didn't get the characters checked first....

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

See hanzismatter.com for that. digitalemur makes reference to their favorite subject in her comment.

[redbird]

Also, is it worth paying RLEPeople if, of that run of 10,000 or 100,000 egg packages, only 10 or 100 are going to be sold to people who don't speak Chinese?

[quezz.livejournal.com]

It's my understanding that that's the equivalent of "safety inspected" or something like that. I've seen that tag before on other foods in China. It means it's been inspected and proven to be safe by the government. This makes sense in the PRC, because so many people sell uninspected food that's caused illness -- China regularly experiences salmonella outbreaks from bad eggs, for example. "Organic" is something else, but I don't remember exactly what.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I couldn't find the regulation itself, but "safety-inspected" sounds like a corresponding term of art in English.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

This makes sense in the PRC, because so many people sell uninspected food that's caused illness -- China regularly experiences salmonella outbreaks from bad eggs, for example.

For that matter, it makes sense here! (And I'm glad it's getting more attention after the peanut butter thing.)

[redfishie.livejournal.com]

that's awesome.

[klingonlandlady.livejournal.com]

but because of the placement of the hyphen, it makes me wonder if the eggs are going to be a private nuisance?

[intuition-ist.livejournal.com]

yeah, i wondered about that, but figured it was too subtle to even impinge on the translator/proofreader of that packaging...

[cerebralpaladin.livejournal.com]

It's interesting-- "public nuisance" is an Anglo-American legal term of art. That makes me wonder if the machine translation is identifying the correct general context for that combination of words (i.e. this is a legal phrase with a specific meaning), and then applying the wrong narrower context (i.e. translating it the way you would translate a statement about a real property inspection instead of the way you would translate a statement about product liability inspection). The "non-public" part of it seems like a further error-- I assume that should be something like "non-hazardous to the public," which is still an inartful phrasing, but would make sense, instead of implying that these are "private nuisance fresh eggs."

[quezz.livejournal.com]

The non- part comes from how the Chinese grammar works: this is a literal word-for-word translation. "wu" (无) is "none" or "non" (example: Jet Li's character in Hero is Wu Ming （无名, "Nameless" or "No Name.") "gong (公)" = public, "hai (害)" = nuisance. :) This is Babelfish at its best. The English "translation" is there for two reasons: the "benefit" of non-Chinese who might by the products, and because the government is trying to encourage the use of English. When I taught English in China, I got lots of good laughs out of seeing some of the signs out that way.

[chris-warrior.livejournal.com]

i dunno, but i must be protein-deprived post-race... i just want those eggs. ;)