Sunday, 22 March 2015

Chinglish


I've chosen this piece of poor translation as it's actually local to Hong Kong, more commonly seen around Lantau Island, where I live. These bins actually refer to how the bins are both for recyclable trash and non-recyclable trash. 'cum' is actually a Latin word, used when describing things as together, it literally means 'together with' or 'along side'. Although this translation does technically make sense, these latin bins choice of wording isn't the best, as we've moved on from the old usage of this word, and found a new meaning for it entirely. Although recently it seems as though the poor translation of these bins has been noticed by officials, as many of them now have a green sticker replacing the 'cum' with a forward slash to indicate that the bins are for both types of trash. They even took to replace one of the characters in Chinese,  and although I do know that the character "及" means and, it does lead me to wonder whether it also has a double meaning. I've still seen the occasional untampered bin around, which continues to remind me of the poor choice of diction Hong Kong made long ago. 





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