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

[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.