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

[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?