I'm Derek McNamara, an Irish guy who was working in Dalian, China as an Oral English teacher in Dalian Maritime University.Now in Chengdu studying Chinese in Southwest University of Finance and Economics

Saturday, February 25, 2006

Disturbingly Bad English : "Perfection Concentration Camp"

While strolling around Xiamen, I noticed an advertisement outside the building site of a new apartment complex:



Now, you may not be able to make out the English text (click on the pic to get a larger version), but the text reads "The Perfection Concentration Camp". What the f%?k ? The Chinese says: 厦禾商圈惊现完美豪宅, which is just going on about the great apartment complex (according to my Chinese sources). I don’t know what prat did the translation, but I reckon if his superiors knew and understood the meaning what he'd written, he'd be shown the door fairly sharpish! Good job only a very tiny fraction of the people who read this sign (i.e. English-speaking westerners) will actually understand what it means, otherwise it could cause a lot of insult and upset!

In case there are some readers who don't know what a concentration camp is, they were horrific places built by the Germans and the Japanese during World War II, in which millions of people were turtured, experimented upon and murdered.

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Could you possibly pop round and get another foto of that before you leave?

Richard

9:48 PM, May 15, 2006

 
Blogger Derek said...

Richard,

Any reason you want another pic?

I don't live in Xiamen, so I can't grab another photo of it. Maybe you can find someone who lives in Xiamen who also has a blog to take a snap for you!

If you click on the pic, you can see a bigger version on my flickr site. The place was on Xiahe Road, near the sea end.

Derek.

1:59 AM, May 16, 2006

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Just thought it as very funny and deserved wider circulation. I thought you meant it was in some part of Dalian, sorry.

8:16 PM, May 16, 2006

 

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