In a setback to Hualien County’s much touted effort to refocus its tourist industry toward the international market, pictures of comical and confusing attempts to render signs from Chinese into English have gone viral on the Internet.
A Facebook user posted images of three road signs for Dasyue Road (大學路) within 5km of each other in Hualien County’s Shoufong Township (壽豐). The English romanization of the Chinese characters on the three signs do not match: They read “Daxue,” “Dah Shyue” and in an experimental attempt at partial translation “Big Xue,” none of which employ Tongyong Pinyin or Hanyu Pinyin, which are normally used on signs in Taiwan.
Not only would road users be confused by the multiple renditions, it seems to imply that the signs refer to three different roads, the poster wrote.
Photo: Wang Chin-yi, Taipei Times
Shoufong Township Office construction division head Huang Wen-tsung (黃文宗) said Hanyu Pinyin should be used on road signs, adding that the use of “Big Xue” was preposterous, especially as the road sign is quite new.
“We have looked into the matter and found that there were three different crews involved in the road’s maintenance,” Huang said, adding that the division would immediately set about rectifying the situation.
“We should be finished within the month,” Huang said.
Screen grab from Facebook
Other examples on Facebook of unusual English translations in the county include a hotel reception desk that informs non-Chinese speakers that there is “Newspaper Everywhere.”
The Facebook user suggested that software translated the Chinese characters, bao dao chu (報到處) (reception desk), into their literal English equivalent. Bao (報), is short for newspaper and dao chu (到處) means everywhere.
As for the billboard outside of the Hualien Train Station which read, “Hualien Welcomes You,” a teacher at National Hualien Senior Girl’s High School named Wang Ya-ling (王雅玲) said she would not expect one of her students to use the term in an English composition.
“Welcome to Hualien,” would be more appropriate, Wang said, adding that it could not be said the billboard is “incorrect,” as English speakers understand the message conveyed.
The county government’s tourism department said that the billboard had been in place for more than six years and that similar phrasing was often used by other cities around the world. However, that the county government would consider covering up the English language part of the billboard if the public find the phrasing inappropriate.
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