I'm a big fan of learning new languages. It can only help you when you're traveling, and it certainly helps the career track when you're fluent in a few dialects. But unless you're absolutely sure what you're saying, be careful about what you put in print.
It's baseball season and in Boston, Red Sox fever is hot. But the Sox are in Japan playing their season openers and we're stuck rooting for them on the other side of the world (and getting up at 3 a.m. to watch the games). Boston.com posted a new logo alongside Japanese text which we're told means "Go Red Sox," but how can you be so sure?
I have a friend, who has a friend, who went to China on vacation. During his trip he went to a tattoo parlor and asked to have "Spirit of the Dragon" inscribed permanently in Chinese on his body. The poor lad didn't know Chinese. The real translation of his tattoo means "Egg Roll $1"
Moral of the story: As my good friend Jane points out, "If you are an English-speaking person, your cultural heritage provides many attractive symbols and phrases that you can read. Use them."
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1 comment:
hey, thanks for the shout-out! http://www.hanzismatter.com/ has a lot of examples of the misuse of Chinese characters in English culture.
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