Warning on a Remote Control Helicopter

WARNING

If blade damage,don't be fly. otherwise it will create the human body or blame damage. 

The warning above is found on an RC helicopter that our family treated ourselves to for Christmas 2013.  I don't know about you, but this is what came to mind when I saw it:

Did they use Google Translate to come up with that?

To test the theory, I used Google Translate to do a back translation of the message and got this:

如果叶片损坏，不要飞。否则会造成人体或怪的伤害。 -- Believe it or not, that's actually close to 100% accurate in terms of what the warning probably would be.  

And if we put the Chinese back translation into Google Translate to see what the English would say this time, we get:

If the blade is damaged, do not fly. Otherwise it will cause harm to humans or strange.  -- Again, it's almost 100% accurate.  So, good news -- they probably didn't use Google Translate!

I'm guessing the Chinese original is something like 如果叶片损坏，不要飞。否则会造成人身或责任伤害。

Which should be translated as: Do not fly the helicopter if a blade is damaged, otherwise bodily injury or property damage may occur.

And here's a message for the manufacturer of a nifty helicopter: 您的直升机翼上面的英文说的是：“如果叶片损坏，别当苍蝇。否则将创造出人体或责怪伤害。”


Please translate responsibly.

Online Tools for Chinese/English Linguists or Learners

There is a saying in Chinese: 工欲善其事，必先利其器。Literally translated, it means if a worker wishes to do a good job, he must first sharpen his tools.

Below is a list of online dictionaries and linguistic tools that I have found useful over the years.  I'm opening my tool box in the hopes that others will benefit from these websites.  Most of them focus on Chinese/English or Simplified/Traditional Chinese, therefore general reference tools such as Merriam-Webster Dictionary and the OED are not included.

• 教育部重編國語辭典修訂本 - A Traditional Chinese dictionary compiled by the Ministry of Education and maintained by National Academy for Educational Research in Taiwan, it is the most comprehensive and authoritative Chinese dictionary today.
• 汉典 - A Simplified Chinese dictionary compiled by volunteers, it is surprisingly comprehensive.  Also offers simple English definitions for a lot of words and phrases.
• 林語堂《當代漢英詞典》電子版 - Lin Yutang's Chinese-English Dictionary of Modern Usage offers some of the most fitting and elegant English translations available.
• Yahoo奇摩字典 - One of the first English-Chinese online dictionaries, it continues to evolve and grow with time.
• 遠流字典通線上資料庫 - Owned by a well-established publisher in Taiwan, this English-Chinese dictionary is a good resource of usage examples.
• Simplified/Traditional Chinese online converter - You can convert Chinese characters in either direction.

Needless to say, these tools aren't 100% foolproof all the time.  Depending on the nature of the project one works on, one may have to look for other resources as well.  But the list is a good start, I hope, for anyone that wishes to improve on their understanding from either direction of the language pair.  


Please translate responsibly.

Language - Where Many Wrongs Can Become a Right

Language is a living thing.  It constantly evolves and grows with the people who use it on a daily basis.  Humans are not machines, though, therefore mispronunciations and typos are common occurrences.  We even say things that are grammatically incorrect from time to time.  One can find examples in pretty much every language in the world:

mischievous vs. mischievious 
换档 vs. 换挡

In both cases above, the phrase in bold is the correct form, but people use the latter form so much that it's become acceptable.  Dictionaries list the latter as a variant of the correct form, meaning it is non-standard but in use and accepted.  

Mistakes like those used to be easy to contain.  These days, however, technology has actually contributed to the spreading of these errors.  With the aid of new phrase learning, search suggestions, and autocomplete, a seemingly innocuous typo can earn itself a spot on the top search results in a matter of days.

So, what should people who work with words do?  

Recently I was involved in a large-scale localization project, not as a translator but as quality assurance at the final stage.  I was surprised to find that "gear" (as in transmission) had been translated as both 挡 and 档 in the glossary, which was already approved and couldn't be modified by then.  I looked them both up and yes, in Simplified Chinese it has become acceptable to use terms such as 换挡 or 手排挡.  Even though the correct phrases are 换档 and 手排档, respectively.  

Interestingly enough, in Traditional Chinese 檔 and 擋 are not interchangeable in any phrases.  And for good reason: the 木 radical in the former indicates that the word 檔 is most likely a noun, whereas the 扌 radical in the latter suggests that 擋 is most likely a verb.  Therefore, a student in Taiwan writing either 換擋 or 手排擋 will be marked as wrong.

I'm not going to say one system is better than the other.  Depending on a person's perspective, I'm sure the answer can be quite different.  One can say, for example, that Simplified Chinese is more forgiving.  Or, another can argue, that it is making people sloppier.

From the standpoint of quality, however, I think the translators should at the very least be consistent.  If you like to use the variant 挡, that's fine; but please do it across the board.  However, considering that 挡 is still non-standard, I'd suggest one stick with the correct form of 档 and stop the errors from spreading even further.


Please translate responsibly.