The First Beijing Olympic Gold Medal Goes To...
Chinglish, which shows up everywhere in China, is mostly amusing, sometimes embarrassing, and, occasionally, very costly. You rarely see one is all the three combined. Then we got really lucky. Someone works for the official Beijing Olympic Committee came out with a Chinglish word that hit a jackpot. Here is the excerpt of a report from the Wall Street Journal last Friday:
CHINA'S 'FRIENDLIES,' FIXED?: The Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee this week changed the collective name of the 2008 Summer Games mascots. Or corrected, rather.
Originally named "The Friendlies," the quintet of cuddly animals will now be known as the fuwa, or "blessed children." According to officials, the revision, estimated to cost millions of yuan in reprints and repackaging, is under way so that the English name is now a Pinyin translation of the Chinese name.
I had never seen the word “mascot” before and had to look it up. Then I got curious about what the Olympic mascots--the lucky symbolic animals--look like. They are ugly, each in its own way! (see from the official Olympic site)
But why the committee wants to drop the name of “Friendlies”? The same article goes on to explain:
Complaints about the "Friendlies" abounded. The moniker was hard for non-English speakers to pronounce and ambiguous in meaning. One academic noted that locals easily mispronounced "friendlies" as "friendless," that it could refer to both friendly people as well as meaningless football games, and that it was a compound of the terms "friend" and "lies."
Well, if these were the reasons, then I start to think the guy who created “Friendlies” is a master of the language; he knew what he's talking about! Three months ago, the reporter Jim Yadley of the New York Time sent this report from Beijing, detailing how the local residents got angry with the “friendless” government, who destroyed their homes to make a room for the Olympic stadiums. And to those residents, the authority’s explanation of such mass destruction sounds a lot like a lie.
That guy deserves a gold medal for creating such a master piece.
CHINA'S 'FRIENDLIES,' FIXED?: The Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee this week changed the collective name of the 2008 Summer Games mascots. Or corrected, rather.
Originally named "The Friendlies," the quintet of cuddly animals will now be known as the fuwa, or "blessed children." According to officials, the revision, estimated to cost millions of yuan in reprints and repackaging, is under way so that the English name is now a Pinyin translation of the Chinese name.
I had never seen the word “mascot” before and had to look it up. Then I got curious about what the Olympic mascots--the lucky symbolic animals--look like. They are ugly, each in its own way! (see from the official Olympic site)
But why the committee wants to drop the name of “Friendlies”? The same article goes on to explain:
Complaints about the "Friendlies" abounded. The moniker was hard for non-English speakers to pronounce and ambiguous in meaning. One academic noted that locals easily mispronounced "friendlies" as "friendless," that it could refer to both friendly people as well as meaningless football games, and that it was a compound of the terms "friend" and "lies."
Well, if these were the reasons, then I start to think the guy who created “Friendlies” is a master of the language; he knew what he's talking about! Three months ago, the reporter Jim Yadley of the New York Time sent this report from Beijing, detailing how the local residents got angry with the “friendless” government, who destroyed their homes to make a room for the Olympic stadiums. And to those residents, the authority’s explanation of such mass destruction sounds a lot like a lie.
That guy deserves a gold medal for creating such a master piece.
posted by Lingual Bee at 1:50 AM
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