中式英语口水鸡没让女足世界杯美女记者流口水



Colleen Ross is a national news producer for CBC Radio in Toronto. She lived in Ghana in 2005, working with Journalists for Human Rights and freelancing for the CBC and BBC. She has an M.A. in both English Literature and Journalism, winning a scholarship to CBC Newsworld. Colleen is trilingual, and taught at a German university before entering journalism. She is originally from Fruitvale, B.C.

该美女记者前一阵子在天津采访女足世界杯。有天晚上很晚才回到酒店,饥肠辘辘,准备去吃点东西,可是菜单让她无所适从了:scanning the menu, I’m not at all sure about the offerings:”stuffed fatty meat pork” makes me squirm. “Slobbering chicken“[口水鸡] “lion head” or “cheese melting in ham parcel” … I’m not sold. I opt for the complimentary apples on my table — at least I know what I’m getting.

让人垂涎欲滴的“口水鸡”没能让美女记者流出口水,最终只选择了赠送的水果–这让她知道她在吃什么。

美女记者说误译的英语在中国很猖獗。由于显而易见的原因,加拿大女足队员对食物都很小心,不会轻易尝试别的食物。而鸡肉通常是比较安全的选择,但是并不是当菜名被翻译成这样的时候:”the fragrance explodes the cowboy bone”-芳香爆炸了牛仔的骨头。谁还敢吃呢?

美女记者还举了很多例子,比如按摩院的广告是这样的:

“Relex your tired of bady”-放松你疲劳的身体-Relax your tired body。

又如给残疾人准备的厕所叫”Deformed man toilet”-畸形人厕所-Disabled man toilet。

再如挂在某商店门口的”Drinktea”,表示暂停营业/关门。

好了,美女记者是这样定义中式英语的:Chinglish is the weird and wonderful result of an English dictionary colliding with Chinese ideograms that often have multiple meanings。

中式英语是英语单词和含有多重含义的中国表意文字相冲撞而产生的既奇怪又奇妙的结果。

美女记者还深入分析中国正在上升的影响力,不仅通过受中文影响的英文,而且通过其最知名的出口:世界最多人口使用的普通话来影响着世界。The rising influence of China is coming not only through Chinese-influenced English, but also through its more famous export: Mandarin, the most widely spoken language on the planet. And beyond China’s borders, tens of millions of people are now picking up scribes and learning to ink ideograms. 在中国之外,成千上万的人们正在学习方块字和练习毛笔字。

美女记者回到加拿大后,还采访了维多利亚大学的语言学教授林华(音译)。林教授认为:“如果普通话成为学习第二语言的首选,就像英语一直是第二语言的首选一样,那么这些中式英语表达法将有更少的机会存在或者产生重大的影响。”林教授进一步解释说:如果普通话变得很流行,那么人们会使用普通话替代英文作为第二语言使用,此时人们更少地使用英语沟通,这就减少了英文被中文影响的机会。”

“If Mandarin Chinese ever becomes the first choice of a second language to learn, as English has been, there is … less of a chance for these Chinglish expressions to survive or make significant impact,” University of Victoria linguistics professor Hua Lin says. If Mandarin becomes so popular that people speak Mandarin instead of English as a second language, people will communicate less in English, giving it less chance to be influenced by Chinese, Lin explains.

与此同时,中国的大城市正在采取行动消灭不可理解的中式英语。北京更是为了来年的国际处女秀-奥林匹克运动会成立了消灭中式英语的专门委员会,势如一场战役。Meanwhile, China’s biggest cities are intent on sweeping the streets clear of unintelligible Chinglish. Beijing has launched a campaign to stamp out bad English in time for its international debut at next year’s Olympics.

(原文发表于2007-11-11)






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