Advert for brothel mistaken for classical Chinese poemAnd the illustration
A respected German scientific magazine has been embarrassed to discover it printed a Chinese-language advertisement for "jade-like girls" and "coquettish and enchanting housewives" across its front cover.
By Richard Spencer in Beijing
Last Updated: 7:49AM GMT 09 Dec 2008
The striking white-on-red text was intended to show off the Chinese focus of the official journal of the Max Planck Institute.
The editors, who thought they were printing a piece of classical Chinese poetry, said they ran it past "a German sinologist" to make sure.
In fact, the text appears to be a flier for a Hong Kong or Macau entertainment centre.
It says two new "directors" have been appointed to oversee a series of "matinees". They will personally lead "jade-like girls in the spring of youth, beauties from the north" - the north of China is a popular recruiting ground for Hong Kong and Macau prostitutes. It also has "housewives whose performances are coquettish and enchanting".
The magazine cover has circulated on Chinese blogs, causing amusement and a certain amount of schadenfreude.
Many English-speaking Chinese are keenly aware that poorly translated signs and restaurant menus here are a perpetual source of amusement for foreigners, with a number of popular online and published collections, such as www.engrish.com
Government-led attempts to spare the nation's blushes are matched with vengeful glee by tattooists who cash in on the current, David Beckham-led craze for Chinese characters by inscribing young backpackers' bodies with slogans such as "A fool and his money are easily parted" or crude sexual invitations.
On the other hand, Chinglish is hitting back due to attempts to use translation software to improve matters.
In one celebrated case, a rash of English-language signs featuring the prominent and inexplicable use of the F-word was discovered to be the fault of a piece of translation software that failed to distinguish meanings of the character for "to do", which carries the same sexual double entendre in Chinese as it does in English.
Particular online delight has come from the discovery of a restaurant whose sign gives its English name as "Translate Server Error".
How the "German sinologist" came to mistake a strip club advertisement for a piece of classical poetry has not been made clear. An apology for the cover's "inappropriate content" to Chinese subscribers from the Max Planck Institute said: "To our sincere regret, it has now emerged that the text contains deeper levels of meaning, which are not immediately accessible to a non-native speaker."
Chinese readers however suspect a practical joke, at best, if not a calculated insult to the pride of the Chinese nation.
I've always wondered about non-Chinese language readers with tattoos of Chinese characters in order to be fashionable. I wonder if they realise the meaning of the words.
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