strange translation in an advertisement (By Sabrina Ng)

Have you ever noticed commercial imperatives helps form language use in advertisement? Do you think the languages companies choose are intelligible or not? I have found an interesting translation in an online shopping website called TaoBao. The translation I choose is mainly about selling bags.

We can see that it is translated into English regardless of grammar and meanings.  For examples, the first sentence ‘Bag Bag too much’ is a translation of ‘包包多了’. But this sentence is grammatically wrong since it is put the same noun together, and ‘too much’ after the nouns, and then ‘too much’ instead of ‘too many’. An unfamiliar word ‘rong’ also appears in the translation.

This advertisement comes from the same website. Again, if we merely read the translation, we can hardly understand what it means. If we only focus on the first sentence, we can find that it is grammatically wrong again. ‘Sunshine is little not beautiful mood’ is a direct translation of ‘明媚的陽光少不了美麗的心情’. And the second sentence ‘換上輕裝去一個可以讓自己完全放縱的環境’ is translated into ‘change on to a light can make oneself completely indulge nce environment.’ To me, I would translate it into ‘Wearing casually and going to places where one can indulge in’.

Sometimes, selling products in foreign languages helps create a high-class image. Yet, using the languages in a wrong way can be counterproductive.

http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=a2106.m894.1000384.47.p8hd1O&id=23669768531&scm=1029.newlist-0.1.50072765&ppath=&sku=&ug=