Amazing Chinglish

Chinglish is commonly seen in China. You could see it everywhere on the local restaurants’ menus, street signs and notices and so on. Many foreigners find it quite amusing. As a Chinese, I am expecting we could get rid of those ridiculous Chinese to English transliterations but some smart translations could be preserved as a sort of culture and I hope they could be categorized as Chinese English in some day. I have collected some Chinglish as below from the Internet. We should definitely avoid such translation errors.

And here are some examples that I think could be accepted as Chinese English just like Long time no see 好(hǎo)久(jiǔ)不(bú)见(jiàn).

Chinese: 你(nǐ)有(yǒu)种(zhǒng)，我(wǒ)要(yào)给(gěi)你(nǐ)点(diǎn)颜(yán)色(sè)瞧(qiáo)瞧(qiáo)！
Chinese English: You have the courage to challenge me. I will give you some color to see.
I will give you some color to see means I am going to teach you a lesson.

Chinese: 好(hǎo)好(hào)学(xué)习(xí)，天(tiān)天(tiān)向(xiàng)上(shàng)
Chinese English:Good good study, day day up.
Good good study, day day up means study hard and you will improve everyday.

Chinese: 人(rén)山(shān)人(rén)海(hǎi)
Chinese English: People mountain people sea
People mountain people sea means crowds of people.

And these days has seen more and more Chinese pinyin being put into the English vocabulary list as China is more open to the western world. For example, 城(chéng)管(guǎn) (officials from China’s City Urban Administrative Enforcement Bureaus) is directly translated as chengguan. And kongfu 功(gōng)夫(fu), mantou 馒(mán)头(tóu)and jiaozi 饺(jiǎo)子(zi) are frequently used among native speakers. Apart from these, the smart Chinese netizens also have created some Chinese English words such as niubility, zhuangbility, shability, erbility, gelivable and ungelivable, some of which have been listed on the Urban Dictionary. The following sentence is very popular among the Chinese internet users: Many people think they are full of niubility and like to play zhuangbility, which only reflect their shability and erbility.

Below are the definitions of niubility, zhuangbility, shability on the Urban Dictionary.

 

Gelivable and ungelivable are two adjectives of opposite meaning. Gelivable derives from 给(gěi)力(lì) which could be transliterated as “give power”. It describes the gap between reality and the ideal. If they are the same, you can say “gelivable”. If not, it is “ungelivable”. When I feel disappointed, I can say that’s so ungelivable! It is such fun. I hope more and more words like these could be created in the future and be a part of English vocabulary.