Taiwan’s road signs will make more sense next year

by Jamie Rhein on

When I lived in Taiwan, I normally didn’t have a clue where I was going. The signage was not particularly helpful. I didn’t read Chinese, and, outside of Taipei, that’s mostly what you saw. Even when there were signs in English, there was an inconsistency with how street names were spelled.

Ask people to spell a word phonetically, and you’ll see variation. In Taiwan, up until recently, there were various systems used to translate words from Chinese into English. Unless there are standardized rules that everyone adheres to, variety might remain the spice of life, but getting from here to there is problematic.

Recognizing that when visitors come to Taiwan, whether for business or pleasure, they have a desire to be able to find their way easily, Taiwan has officially adopted the “hanyu pinyin writing system” for translating Chinese to English. This Reuters article explains the details about how the government is publishing a spelling guide in order to redo road signs in order to reflect the consistency. The changes will start in 2009.

No longer will you see “Minquan Road,” “Minchuan Road,” “Binjiang Street,” and “Pin Chiang Street” on various signs for the exact same street. See what I mean? Wouldn’t that drive you a bit NUTS?!

(Although, as you can see from the Flickr photo by onkio & di’s, some signs in Taiwan do reflect the adage, “A picture speaks a thousand words.” At least the part about the car getting towed.)

Using an online translator to come up with an English name for your restuarant is a bad idea

by Scott Carmichael on

Let’s assume for a minute that you own a restaurant in China. Then we’ll assume you don’t speak a word of English, but you don’t care because you have Internet access, and have found a great online translation site.

The Olympics are coming, along with millions of hungry tourists who’ll want to try your food, so you do the right thing and pop your restaurant name into the translation site, and have someone print your new English name on a massive sign.

You can probably tell where this is heading. It’s one thing when translation sites like Babelfish or Google Translate manage to create humorous translations, it’s another when the site doesn’t work and you simply cut and paste the error message, assuming it translates to “Wong’s tasty Kung Pao chicken”.

For some more funny signs, check out this mysterious warning sign, or this collection of hilarious signs from around the world.

Source, via Adweek.

Mickey Sets a Course for Shanghai

by Josh Lew on

Mickey Mouse has been planning to bring Disneyland to Shanghai for some time now. Details have been sketchy and the project has been put on the shelf several times.

But people in one village are banking on the billionaire rodent to eventually get things off the ground.

According to Shanghaiist, business people and home owners in Jinjia have been building on to current structures and establishing new businesses. These would-be entrepreneurs are not hoping that Disneyland will be built nearby so that they can sell food and souvenirs to the theme park’s clientele. They are betting that Disney will want to buy them out so that the park can be built directly on top of the village. The new constructions and additions are an effort to make property seem more valuable in the eyes of Disney so that the buy-out prices will be higher.

However, the mouse has not yet chosen the exact location of the park. The residents of Jinjia are acting on pure speculation.

Disney is currently negotiating with Chinese officials in an effort to iron out the details, which allegedly include some sort of profit sharing scheme (Mickey sure knows how to get things done in China) There is the small matter of the 2008 Olympics, which are probably causing a bit of distraction amongst area bureaucrats.

While most people could care less if there is another Disneyland in the world, one village, a handful of Chinese government officials, and one shrewd mouse are waiting for ground to be broken with bated breath.

Expedia survey rates the world’s worst tourists

by Abha Malpani on

The French, Indians, and the Chinese have been voted as the world’s worst tourists by a group of 4000 hoteliers, in a survey conducted by online travel search engine Expedia. On the other hand, the best tourists are 1) Japanese 2) British and Germans.

Yup, looks like the annoying and continuous photo taking of everything in sight by the Japanese, and the drunken stag parties of the British and the Germans do not lay room for complaint, thanks to their wonderful behavior, manners, generosity, willingness to integrate themselves into a new culture — criteria on which the nationalities were rated.

Interestingly enough, a similar survey was conducted by Expedia 6 years ago and it tagged the British, Danish and Irish as the worst. The British were voted as the “rudest, worst-behaved, most linguistically incompetent and least adventurous holiday makers.” Ouch. What’s for that drastic change from best to worst?

Anyway, I hate such generalizations because I think an entire race can’t be blamed for the misdoings of a bunch of people. Surveys like this are interesting insight, but nothing more.

How fluent are you? Find out here.

by Aaron Hotfelder on

Though people spend quite a bit of time learning foreign languages in high school and college, their language skills have a way of withering from inattention, like a dried-out potted plant sitting on a window sill.

But just how far have your language skills fallen? Here are some handy categories to help you find out:

Completely Fluent

You can converse with native speakers with ease, with knowledge of idioms and understanding of a wide range of accents. When someone says, “You speak Chinese? Let me hear some!” you answer with something that impresses just about everyone in the room.

You often suggest dining at ethnic restaurants where you can use your language skills to impress your date. When the waiter comes to take your order, you make a point to ask a question about something on the menu in the waiter’s native tongue, even though you didn’t care about the answer.

Partially Fluent

Though you’re approaching near-total fluency, you lack understanding of complicated grammar and certain non-literal expressions. You’re proficient at conjugating verbs, but uncommon tenses and certain irregulars can present problems.

Your rejoinder to the “Lemme hear some Chinese!” demand is still quite impressive, and virtually indistinguishable from the completely fluent speaker to the untrained ear.

Most importantly, when people ask if you’re fluent in a foreign language, you assure them that you are– completely.

Intermediate Skills

You have a good mastery of vocabulary, including nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. You can assemble multi-clause sentences, and understand the language when it is spoken clearly and slowly.

You’ve mastered several impressive-sounding phrases that you’ve basically adopted as party tricks. When you’re out on dates at ethnic restaurants, you can successfully order in a foreign language. Still, both the waiter and your date think you’re an asshole.

When asked if you’re completely fluent in a foreign language, you invariably answer, “No, but almost.”

Elementary Skills

You’ve memorized a number of basic nouns, verbs, and adjectives, and you can put together simple sentences. You spend the majority of your language classes reading and reciting banal conversations, as in:

“How are you?”

“I am well. Do you want to go to the discoteque?”

“Yes, I go to the discoteque with you.”

“Thank you.”

You really cannot foresee yourself ever becoming fluent, ever.

Smile and Nod

To put it bluntly, you haven’t understood a word anyone has said for the last hour. You have virtually no knowledge of any words– nouns, verbs, adjectives. Even if you did, you’d have no idea how to assemble those into anything resembling a coherent phrase.

You’ve perfected the art of the smile-and-nod. You think this is faking people into believing you know more of the language than you really do, but this is unlikely.

Your constant nodding has signified that you’re in agreement with everything that people have been saying– no matter how objectionable those statements might have been. You may well have just agreed with the assertion, “You know, Stalin wasn’t bad; he was just misunderstood.”

During conversation, you punctuate others’ statements with an agreeable “Ah!” or, alternatively, you furrow your brow and give a thoughtful “Hmm…”

When asked if you’re fluent in a foreign language, you– no surprise– smile and nod.