Over a Billion People but No One Around to do a Good Translation?

by Steve Reiss (Dalmdad Landscape Photography - www.dalmdad.com and https://www.facebook.com/Dalmdad.)

What Does This Mean?
Trash Can-Wuhan, China

April 1, 2012: Wuhan, China.  At East Lake, Wuhan, I pointed out to Raymond this strange sign on a trash can.  He did an instant machine translation on his iPad and said to me, "that's exactly what the Mandarin translates to."  The machine translation was not very helpful; and neither of us understood the point the sign on the trash can was trying to make.

And that is typically the problem.

Clearly, the person or machine that made the translation made a direct word-by-word translation from Mandarin to English.  However, the translator most probably did not understand or take into account that regardless of the language, words and phrases have different meanings in different contexts and when a translator or machine simply goes word-by-word to make its translation from one language to another, the translator does not know which among many meanings for a word or group of words may have the best fit.  Accordingly, without review by a native English speaker fluent in Mandarin, translations are sometimes senseless, and do not say what was really intended.  Wikipedia's article on Chinglish describes how this happens in excellent detail.  The Chinglish article also describes how and why Mandarin to English translations may produce such senseless phrases as: "fried enema"; "slip carefully; to take notice of safe": "the slippery are very crafty".


Raymond tells me the lack of understanding of the meanings of English idioms and expressions (especially in informal oral communications) by my Mandarin-mainly speaking co-workers is why no one in China or Taiwan get my jokes.  The jokes just go right over my co-workers heads and leave painfully blank expressions on them and me. 

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PS - Raymond is an American of Cantonese background that I work with.  He took me around Wuhan and did most of the speaking.  He will be frequently mentioned in posts from the Wuhan-trip series.

PPS - This sign was not an April Fool's Joke.

PPPS - When I got back to our office in the US, I asked Lisa what she understood this sign to mean.  Lisa is far more experienced in the nuances of Mandarin/English than an iPad.  She said the Mandarin sign is a "caution board" having no relationship to the trash can.  

Rather, the "I" refers to the  plants and grass planted at the base of the trash can and partially seen in the lower right corner of the picture.  "Immature" means the plants were recently planted and have not grown to adulthood (i.e., are not mature).  The second line, "please do not pull and break off" means don't pull out the young sprouting seedlings because they will not leave any roots behind to continue growing.

So, Raymond, his IPad, and I, totally misunderstood the meaning of the sign.