Chinglish translation - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Richard Crowley
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 23, 2016, 10:04:42 pm
content: You can usually work out generally what they mean, but this one is incomprehensible to me....QuoteContext:http://www.ebay.com/itm/MT3608-DC-DC-Step-Up-Power-Apply-Module-Booster-Power-Module-/401093562403

author: rrinker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 23, 2016, 10:24:02 pm
content: OK, that wins, certainly the most non sequitur Chinglish I've seen.Unless there's a product they also sell call TV University that for whatever reason provides some level of current output.

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 24, 2016, 12:40:09 am
content: Lots of fun in that one, but it seems obvious from reading the "specs" on some of their other products that they are placing a limit on output power. Some of their other modules either do this for you, or must be used in a safe manner-still not clear from the fractured English.All that said, their English is far better than my Chinese, but then I am not trying to sell into that market.

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 24, 2016, 11:28:34 am
content: This might be the original Chinese text:http://nxtmarket.info/item/45220082935Google Translate on the last part saysQuote...which is damn close.Edit: There's also this:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shenzhen_Radio_and_TV_University

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 24, 2016, 03:47:54 pm
content: The Chinese-American playwright David Henry Hwang (best known for "M. Butterfly") wrote a wonderful comedy "Chinglish" about the language barrier. An American businessman is looking for business in China. The supertitle projection (as used in operas) showed literal translations of the English and Mandarin dialog, including the translator's translations into Mandarin of the English. "I am from a family-owned company" was translated into "I am from an insignificant company".

author: G7PSK
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 24, 2016, 03:58:58 pm
content: I have just taken delivery of a Chinese made tig welder and on the bottom of the first page of the users manual is the warning "CAUTION Creep age protecting switch should be added when using the machine!!!"Apart from the fact they address their customers as "Creep" what the hell is an age-protection switch.

author: VK3DRB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 25, 2016, 01:32:01 am
content: A few years ago a friend tried to start a company to help Chinese businesses create documentation and websites using correct English and technical data. He found that the Chinese are simply not interested.It is one reason why the PRC Chinese are not players in the highly regulated western markets for high end medical devices. In general they cannot hope to meet IEC-60601, IEC-13485 and IEC-62304, in that they cannot get their documentation right, let alone the stringent product development and manufacturing processes required. Hence why one of the only remaining healthy electronics industries left in the West is medical electronics.

author: Richard Crowley
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 25, 2016, 02:04:31 am
content: Quote from: G7PSK on March 24, 2016, 03:58:58 pmA creepage protecting switch sounds a lot like GFCI or RCD (or whatever you call it in your country).

author: G7PSK
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 25, 2016, 09:10:23 am
content: That is what I assumed they meant but they had it down as " Creep age-protection switch" they separated the creep and joined the age protection as shown in the photo.

author: gamalot
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 25, 2016, 10:18:01 am
content: Quote from: Richard Crowley on March 23, 2016, 10:04:42 pmok, I am Chinese, and my English sucks1). The input voltage should not exceed the maximum input voltage2). The peak current output current is no more thanThe maximum output current (2A)

author: gamalot
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 25, 2016, 10:23:07 am
content: Quote from: amyk on March 24, 2016, 11:28:34 amthere is a typo in Chinese, should be '??' not '??'

author: gamalot
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 25, 2016, 10:26:23 am
content: Quote from: gamalot on March 25, 2016, 10:23:07 am

author: dannyf
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 25, 2016, 12:37:25 pm
content: QuoteThere are a lot of such jokes - you can search websites and find books on them.I generally enjoy reading them - understanding how difficult it can be translating from one language to another, and I sympathize with non-native speakers: I am sure I made more than my fair share of mistakes when I travel overseas so somewhere someone is laughing at my expense as well.I do find it offensive that some people think that making a mistake in a foreign language makes that person inferior: how many foreign languages do you speak flawlessly?

author: matseng
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 25, 2016, 01:45:46 pm
content: Chinglish spelling can be fun too. I found this in my local dollar-store in Malaysia - they at least got 1 word out of 5 spelled correctly :-)

author: rrinker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 25, 2016, 01:52:12 pm
content: And look at the upside down on the other side of the product - they got "fast charge" perfect as well.It's not so much the issue of not speaking other languages - I can probably make myself understood in German, but a native German speaker would probably wonder WTF was wrong with me. On the other hand - if I were building a product I wanted to sell in Germany, I'd recognize that my own translation skills were not up to par and would engage someone who could do a better job of it to write the German version of my instructions. It's one thing to see the horrible Chinglish on cheap products like said USB cable, but when you get that in higher end products - there's really no excuse other than a lazy attitude. Clearly not worth the effort on a product people can be expected to recognize and already know how to use, but when translating for a high end product where proper instructions on use are vital - recognize your limitations and find someone who can translate with some accuracy, please.

author: dannyf
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 25, 2016, 01:58:19 pm
content: QuoteI think it was trying to say that it is made from recycled materials. A good thing in my book.

author: dannyf
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 25, 2016, 02:01:17 pm
content: Quotethat can be difficult for the kind of prices that they are selling at.Anyway, my favorite was this: this has to be in the late 1980s and early 1990s, at a Marriott in western Shanghai. The desk for dry cleaning in the grand lobby has a sing that says, literally, "please drop your pants here and the maids will serve you".

author: zlymex
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 25, 2016, 02:03:06 pm
content: '?' has many meaning such as 'dry', 'do', and 'f**k'. Some time when people look it up in on-line dictionaries, that when drama happens.

author: zal42
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: March 25, 2016, 04:31:30 pm
content: Quote from: dannyf on March 25, 2016, 12:37:25 pmDo people really think that? That's stupid.I will admit, though, that in a commercial context I assume that if they couldn't be bothered to run the copy by someone who can speak the language of the people they're marketing to then there are probably many other aspects of the product they couldn't be bothered to do properly. There are exceptions, but I think it's a reasonable rule of thumb.

author: VK3DRB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 25, 2016, 08:56:59 pm
content: English is a great language, but Australian English is English perfected. Beaudy mate.I have to admire foreigners from non-English speaking backgrounds who learn our language. This came to light as I had to learn French - a bug infested language. Although unlike American English, French is very attractive written down and the French are to be admired for keeping their language intact.English has a lot of bugs in it. If it were developed by an engineer, he would be fired for incompetence.

author: Richard Crowley
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 25, 2016, 09:09:36 pm
content: Quote from: VK3DRB on March 25, 2016, 08:56:59 pmMost of those "bugs" are the backwards-compatible anomalies like arcane spelling from antecedent languages like Anglo Saxon, etc.Actually, English is probably the most robust and wide-spreading language on our planet. And its pragmatic development of new words and meanings, as well as indiscriminately borrowing from other languages are what makes it so robust. There is no "English Academy"* that meets every two years to throw out foreign words and invent "english words" to replace them.One of my favorite documentary series: "The Story of English" presented by Robert MacNeilhttps://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6D54D1C7DAE31B36*http://www.academie-francaise.fr/

author: VK3DRB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 25, 2016, 09:21:59 pm
content: Quote from: Richard Crowley on March 25, 2016, 09:09:36 pmThanks Richard for the link.. I'll check it out.English is is the third most spoken language on the planet, coming after Mandarin and Spanish. English is the number one international language of business, computing and electronics.I have to admire foreigners from non-English speaking backgrounds who learn our language. By far the best (and only?) way to really learn a language is to live among the people and immerse oneself into the culture. Hence why many Chinese from the People's Republic of China have poor prospects of ever really learning English. Even when they emigrate to English speaking countries, they tend to stay in their own ethnic enclaves which works against them. My daughter, born in Oz, moved to France about 4 years ago (married a Frenchman). When she first moved there, she purposely stayed away from English speakers and Anglo culture, forcing herself to learn French. She is now fluent in French, spoken and written. She did a PhD in the history of sadomasochism in classic French literature when she was living in Melbourne, so she had known some basic French language prior to moving there.The difficulty of learning another language came to light as I had to learn French. Its got bugs in it too, some worse than English. However in my opinion, French is very attractive written down and the French are to be admired for keeping their language intact.

author: Richard Crowley
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 25, 2016, 10:04:37 pm
content: Quote from: VK3DRB on March 25, 2016, 09:21:59 pmThe opening lines of the MacNeil documentary are:QuoteRight here in the neighborhood where I live and work (Hillsboro, Oregon, USA) there is a flight school at the suburban regional airport. Every year the government of China sends probably hundreds of young men (I've never seen any women) over here to Oregon for perhaps a year to get all their flight training up through multi-engine commercial. Clearly, a country as big and wealthy as China could afford to do this back at home, and for far less cost. I can only think that part of the training is living in an English speaking country to immerse themselves in the language and some of the "culture" (in the broadest sense of the word!)Or perhaps they are trying to spend some of those trillions of US dollars they have lying around. I just sent them another few hundred during an inadvisable late-night buying spree on Ebay.

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 26, 2016, 12:08:39 am
content: Quote from: VK3DRB on March 25, 2016, 01:32:01 amIf the Chinese have mistaken the market value of good English (or German or French or whatever) documentation it would be easy to make your own money. Just buy the cheap Chinese products with poor documentation, write your own documentation for them, and resell with appropriate markup.I'm betting they evaluated the market correctly.

author: dannyf
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 26, 2016, 01:05:47 am
content: QuoteThe fact that no one has been known to make a good living off of that shows the rationale in not investing in good documentation for this segment of the market. It tells you a lot more about the buyers than the sellers.

author: VK3DRB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 28, 2016, 04:21:15 am
content: Quote from: dannyf on March 26, 2016, 01:05:47 amYou will not be able to develop medical products for sale in the West unless you have a very high standard of documentation and conform to regulatory standards where you will be audited. If ifs, buts or maybe's.

author: G7PSK
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 28, 2016, 07:46:29 am
content: Quote from: VK3DRB on March 28, 2016, 04:21:15 amIt is not just documentation for the users manual either, the whole manufacturing chain has to be documented from raw materials and manufacturing procedures right through to finished product.

author: VK3DRB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 28, 2016, 08:50:13 am
content: Quote from: G7PSK on March 28, 2016, 07:46:29 amPretty much so. Few engineers today are aware that mitigation of safety risks in medical products is no longer acceptable by only having a warning in a user manual. Other physical means of mitigation are required within the product itself. Furthermore, "critical" components must be identified and documented accordingly.Maybe in 20 years the People's Republic of China may have progressed beyond being a dodgy third world country into one which can produce world class medical devices. Until then it has a long way to go to clean up its act.

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 28, 2016, 02:35:17 pm
content: So medical products are off the table for a while. I would assume that space applications are too. But that leaves a whole world of opportunities for those who think that fixing Chinglish is a market opportunity.

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 28, 2016, 03:18:02 pm
content: The Chinese space program is doing it's own work, I think they will have good internal documentation. They do have the option of putting the manufacturer of the parts right next to the launch tower......

author: PedroDaGr8
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 29, 2016, 02:50:32 am
content: Quote from: Richard Crowley on March 25, 2016, 09:09:36 pmReminds me of my favorite oft-quoted phrase about English:The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and riffle their pockets for new vocabulary.-James NicollAnd honestly, this is part of what has made English universally compatible (the other part being the military-dollar). The fact that if we don't have the word for something, we will just blatantly steal it from another language and make it our own.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 29, 2016, 03:32:06 am
content: Quote from: CatalinaWOW on March 26, 2016, 12:08:39 amTaking a poorly documented Chinese product, dealing with the documentation and approvals, and marketing it is exactly how many western companies acquire many of the things they sell under their own name.

author: vk6zgo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 29, 2016, 08:00:52 am
content: Even with the best will in the world,things can get confused:-A Chinese transmitter intermittently brought up the alarm "OI".We thought it was a mistranslation of "I.O." (input/output) & went off chasing what we thought was an intermittent loss of the control signal.What in fact it was saying was "0I"---the manufacturers numbered the four RF amplifiers 0-3,instead of the more common 1-4,or a-d.So the alarm was “ High current alarm for Amplifier # 0!".The LCD display did not have any other incidences of "O",so it was an easy mistake.Another such case,was when I was fixing the driver for a German turbo vacuum pump.The (cruddy) circuit diagram showed a circle with four wires going into it,& the label "Drossel".I assumed it was an inductor,but was it a special kind?Looking up the word for Inductor,it was “Induktivität“-----pretty intuitive!But “Drossel’?I asked a non-technical German person,but the best they could suggest was a "Thrush"(the bird).It turns out "Drossel" is the same as "Choke",so it was just a plain old choke!Perhaps the Engineer just drew a circle with “Drossel” on it,& the Draughtsman,unfamiliar with theless formal name,just copied it verbatim,meaning to check later—later never came!Then there was the piece of French equipment my brother told me about,where the Manualspecified that the device operated on the X to XX GHz“group of musicians playing together”

author: mixedreader
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: March 15, 2019, 03:10:56 am
content: Quote from: amyk on March 24, 2016, 11:28:34 amIt's more thanChinglish. It was from a typo of the original Chinese text.The last a few Chinese characters was trying to say "最大输出电流" (maximum output current) but somehow this guy typed it is as "电大输出电流", hence the "TV University" as you see.Yes, Google Translation it is.

author: HalFET
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 15, 2019, 10:02:54 am
content: Do repeat mentions of "datasheep" instead of "datasheet" count?

author: Canis Dirus Leidy
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 15, 2019, 10:40:54 am
content: Quote from: HalFET on March 15, 2019, 10:02:54 amYou are too hard on sapient keyboards (even if they have "sense of the paragraph"):

author: makerman
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 15, 2019, 12:47:14 pm
content: Quote from: TimFox on March 24, 2016, 03:47:54 pmThat sounds hilarious i'll try and find it

author: Deepak
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 15, 2019, 09:12:53 pm
content: Quote from: blueskull on March 25, 2016, 10:19:40 pmThe regulation is that ATC must be able to speak English when requested. Pilots aren't regulated, as someone who has no intention to fly outside of his or her country would be able to communicate fine in the local language. For commercial flights though a pilot effectively must learn English as that's the guaranteed lingua franca.

author: soldar
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 15, 2019, 11:45:53 pm
content: I have quite a collection of these.

author: 6PTsocket
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 16, 2019, 01:17:23 pm
content: Quote from: G7PSK on March 24, 2016, 03:58:58 pmA child lock out device for safety?Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

author: 6PTsocket
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 16, 2019, 01:42:21 pm
content: Quote from: PedroDaGr8 on March 29, 2016, 02:50:32 amThe Spanish speakers do it, too borrowing from English it is called Spanglish. I think any language group in close contact with another borrows and butchers words. English is full of butchered Spanish.Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

author: Deepak
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 16, 2019, 03:08:54 pm
content: Quote from: 6PTsocket on March 16, 2019, 01:42:21 pmThe Spanish speakers do it, too borrowing from English it is called Spanglish. I think any language group in close contact with another borrows and butchers words. English is full of butchered Spanish.Sent from my SM-G900V using TapatalkOh the number of times I've heard mano-a-mano used incorrectly

author: 6PTsocket
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 16, 2019, 03:36:54 pm
content: Quote from: Deepak on March 16, 2019, 03:08:54 pmOh the number of times I've heard mano-a-mano used incorrectlyMy favorite offense is the word 'tamale'. No such word in Spanish. Plural is tamales, singular is tamal. Spanish words ending in a consonant use es for the plural for ease of pronounciation. English speakers assume the singular of tamales must be tamale. The English word larriat is actually la riata in Spanish. Spanish has been corrupted with words like home runno, marketa (mercado in Spanish), carro for car.Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

author: 6PTsocket
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 16, 2019, 08:45:55 pm
content: Just spotted this one on ebay. You get some pretty funny translations from French, too." Turn the nozzle 1/4 turn in the opposite direction of the needles of a watch."I think that is counter clockwise in US English or anti clockwise in the UK.Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

author: bsfeechannel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 17, 2019, 01:05:30 am
content: Quote from: 6PTsocket on March 16, 2019, 03:36:54 pmMaybe Spanish speakers resorted to the wordcarroinstead ofcocheunder the influence of English. Butcarroitself is a Spanish word. As well as a Portuguese word.It is a direct descendant of the Latin wordcarrumor its variantcarrus, itself borrowed from Gaulish, which means wagon. The classical Latin word for a car, more precisely a chariot, iscurrum.The English word car came from Latincarra(plural ofcarrum) via Old North French.