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So Many Typos in Shanghai Metro - Part III WJS, I hope you understand that I don't have any problem with your slightly imperfect writing. It almost always puts the point across effectively and, besides, the slight imperfections only give it an authentic Chinese feel, as some of your readers have commented earlier. But I hope you see my point here. The purpose of the signs in English are to communicate to English speaking commuters, and to this end the typos and grammatical mistakes are harmless. It wouldn't make sense to spend extra $ just so that these signs would be grammatically and idiomatically perfect. As you might have noticed from the response to your request for corrections on your blog entries, native English speakers-those who actually obtain information from these signs in English are more tolerant (and much less prone to misinterpret Chinese flavored English) than you think they are. They do understand they are not in an English speaking country after all. I think you are wasting your energy on the wrong focus here. If you truly are concerned with Shanghai's image, and the welfare of expatriates and tourists, then maybe we should start advocating for free toilet paper in public bathrooms. Just a thought. |
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So Many Typos in Shanghai Metro - Part III I am very displeased with your tirade of the harmless misuse of English on signs in Shanghai's public transportation system. I can go on and on about how your reaction was exaggerated and how your criticism was unfounded, but I hope what follows will suffice to demonstrate to you the irony of your complaint. I randonly chose an earlier entry of yours and took a quick look at the first two paragraphs. All comments are in parentheses. "Winners never quite (quit) and quitters never win". This is what I learnt from the (omit the) two years of blogging. I started doing something with quite interesting ideas (awkward), but it stopped by (for) some reason. Many people have brilliant ideas but not many can stick to (with) it (them). I started the My City, My Bus Stop project in the first week of this year (awkward), but the system failed because of migration to the new server. It involves many works (much work) to rebuild the whole thing and it did take some time to rebuild it. My friend Isaac has asked about the status of the project and so does (have) some contributors. Although it took about half (a) year to fix it, I finally fixed the problem and now everything works. I bet we can start from this new start (bad style) - the My City, My Bus Stop Project didn't die (hasn't died) yet. |
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MyBusStop Project Reloaded I am very displeased with your tirade of the harmless misuse of English on signs in Shanghai's public transportation system. I can go on and on about how your reaction was exaggerated and how your criticism was unfounded, but I hope what follows will suffice to demonstrate to you the irony of your complaint. I took a quick look at your first two paragraphs of this entry. All comments are in parentheses. "Winners never quite (quit) and quitters never win". This is what I learnt from the (omit the) two years of blogging. I started doing something with quite interesting ideas (awkward), but it stopped by (for) some reason. Many people have brilliant ideas but not many can stick to (with) it (them). I started the My City, My Bus Stop project in the first week of this year (awkward), but the system failed because of migration to the new server. It involves many works (much work) to rebuild the whole thing and it did take some time to rebuild it. My friend Isaac has asked about the status of the project and so does (have) some contributors. Although it took about half (a) year to fix it, I finally fixed the problem and now everything works. I bet we can start from this new start (bad style) - the My City, My Bus Stop Project didn't die (hasn't died) yet. |