This undated photo shows an exit of a Carrefour store in Beijing's Haidian District with a signboard carrying a misspelt character "Jia" above. [Photo: Kichy.com]

French supermarket chain Carrefour slightly misprints a character in its Chinese trademark, a sharp-eyed costumer has recently pointed out.

China Central Television (CCTV) reported the customer pinpointed miss of a stroke in the character of "Jia" in Carrefour's Chinese trademark "Jia Le Fu".

The three characters "Jia Le Fu" are the transliteration of "Carrefour" and mean "family, joy and blessings" literally. "Jia" is the character corresponding to "family" or "home".

In the left lower part of the character "Jia", there should be three oblique strokes, but there are only two in Carrefour's Chinese trademark. Technically, the misspelt character doesn't make any sense in Chinese language.

The spelling mistake has existed for more than a decade. An official with Carrefour in northeast China's Shenyang city said the three characters were registered as a trademark and had been approved by the national trademark authority in 1995.

The official showed a CCTV reporter a copy of the official trademark registration certificate, which bears the three characters with the character "Jia" missing a stroke.

The cooperate logo Carrefour uses in China usually consists of three portions: a red and blue colored device, a French word "Carrefour", and three Chinese characters "Jia Le Fu". The three portions are sometimes arranged in different orders.

The logo with a misspelt character can be seen in all the 98 Chinese stores of Carrefour, its promotion materials and its official Chinese website.