Rost in Tlansgration

I do promise for those of you who are picture starved I will have another post with pictures up soon, but before that I thought you would appriciate something small while I have a break at work.

For those of you who do not understand the title of this post, let me assure you that it translates to "Lost in translation" for those of you who do let me similarly assure you that I am fully aware that the l/r confusion is primarily a Japanese language difficultly and that I am more than aware of the different difficulties in the Chinese language. In many ways that is what this particular post is about.

The Chinese, just like American's have a strange habit of directly translating things in English sometimes and getting creative other times. This combined with a wide variety of typos and simple ignorance have lead to a number of amusing signs and phrases that I have heard here.

Firstly one of these signs that I think fully expresses what I am trying to express was the name of a bakery I saw on my trip to ChengDu, "Juicy Bread." Now it is possible to get inside the head of the person who wrote this down at some point and then to try to extract what marketing scheme they had in mind from it, but regardless of your efforts the name does not encourage someone to eat there.

Another local store that is almost finished being made is "Good Cafe." Now this alone is an interesting marketing plan, to name your Cafe good so that people know it is and also to do so in tall english letters without any chinese on the exterior in a city with extremely limited numbers of English Speakers. To make matters worse, they meant to name the store Good Coffee, but the chinese say Cafe when they talk about Coffee.

Similar stores have caught my eye such as "Splendid Mall" which is really more like a wallmart on the second floor and a Grocery Store on the first; "The Chinese Arrogant Men's Clothing Brand" which I did not go into despite the fact that I was very tempted; and the district in LuoYang called "Computer City" because it has electronics shops.

Flat out amusing typo's have lead to signs such as No Snoking! being posted in the local hospital, this of course has made me wonder what Snoking is and why the Hospital doesn't want it done in the halls.

The one that floored me however is the name of a very respectible clothing and accessory brand that is mostly for teenage boys. "Playboy" complete witht he bunny logo was bought, the name and logo only not the magazine as such things are illegal here, and have been used for watches, clothing, belts, and the such. It really plays with your brain to see a 13 year old boy who still thinks girls are icky to be wearing a belt with the Playboy Bunny logo on it.

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Lastly you will have noticed that the title of this blog has changed from the rather droll: Behind the Iron Fortune Cookie, to the enigmaticly amusing "Super Panda and the Children's Table"!

Over the last two weeks I have had plently of wonderful kid moments including one student who burst out saying "I don't love you mom, I love you Scott!" while we were teaching them to write a letter for their mother (he was 4). I have had the treat to see two K level classes have talent shows in which they go to a McDonalds and order food in English (though the teachers wrote it down in chinese for the clerks to understand). But this change of title comes from a game I had been playing yesterday.

I would ask the class to give each student a second name, so we had Donna the Smile and Iris the Flower, and Jack the Moneky, and Peter the Spiderman, and the like all day long.

In my first class I was almost Scott/Voldemort but instead became Scott the Vampire. This followed less than a week about me joking with my co-workers that I should make my chinese surname Hu (pronounced Who?) so that I can study hard and become Doctor Who. I found out later that a PhD is actually called Master, so I cannot be the Doctor, only one of the bad guys... such is life.

Still my last class of the day could not decide between Superman and Panda, so I was Scott the Super Panda! Dah da da dah dah *chomp... music pauses while he eats* da da da Dah Dah da Daaa- *chomp* -aaa.

Later that night I went to a gathering of people who wanted to practice their English and wound up in charge of the kids table. So that is the adventure of Super Panda and the Children's Table!

You travel half way around the world but you still wind up at the children's table...