Electronic Self-Portrait?
Self-Drawing
This is an ATM on the North 3rd Ring Road in Beijing. The Chinese translation for ATM is 自动提款机 (zì dòng tí kuǎn jī), which literally means Automated Withdrawal Machine.
Money is important, but Huaxia Bank preaches that you can’t do without art.
Pinyin Readability in Beijing Subway
Can you read this pinyin sign on the screen in an line 5 subway train? Do you know what’s the meaning, can you separate this in syllables & even pronounce it correctly? I bet not. It is hard for me, too.
I don’t know why they put all syllables stuck in capital letters. Heping Xiqiao or Heping West “Bridge” (so it is called) would be more readable & understandable.
Carefully Slide on This Slippery Floor
This photo is taken at the toilet of the airport in Hohhot, capital city of China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. The original Chinese characters means “Take care, slippery floor” and is mistranslated into English as “Carefully slide.” Well, thanks to the fact that each Chinese character can have so distinctive functions & meanings.
小心 means “care”, but since most Chinese words can serve as various parts of speech, they can also mean “careful” or even to “take care”. Whereas 滑 could be “slippery” or “to slide”.
And the really confusing thing is 地, which can either be 1) land, floor, earth, territory; or simply 2) a suffix for adverbs (-ly). That’s why “Take care, slippery floor” is mistranslated like this.
