By JayShen, United States

The first English sign that caught my eyes when I just arrived in Beijing was a traffic sign along the airport freeway, it reads: ‘keep space’. I believe that it is to warn the drivers not to get too close to the vehicles ahead, so as not to kiss the ass of another vehicle. However, space refers to an area with two or three dimensions, such as in ‘’space shuttle. The correct word should be ‘distance’ that refers to the length between two points. This traffic sign is greeting every single person arriving in Beijing for at least fifteen years. No body in the freeway administration even knows it is a wrong word, or cares about it. How is the impression of Beijing for the travelers from English speaking countries?

Another sign that makes me really sick is “Racist Park” along The Fourth Circle Freeway (that freeway is mistranslated as The Fourth Ring Rd.). Racists refer to a group of people who discriminate other people based on the colors of their skins, their religions, genders or economic status. In the US, racial is illegal and a crime if any action is taken. For the tourists from English speaking countries seeing this sign, it would immediately occur to their minds that racial were legal in China, racists could celebrate in the park. Actually, this is the Park of Chinese Ethnical Minorities.

Besides, Road normally has intersections with other roads or streets, The Fourth Circle, freeway however, has no intersection, it is free of traffic lights, so, it is not a road, but a freeway.
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Once I saw an official post regarding the Automatic Fare Collection Systems at a subway entrance. To emphasize the new tech is imported, the English words “Automatic Fare Collection Systems” was printed behind the Chinese original. However, the word ‘collection’ was misspelled as ‘clection’, a simplest spelling error that a first grade student in elementary school would never make. I don’t think the post writer’s English is worse that a school kid’s, he or she simply didn’t pay enough attention to the job. The mistake would never be made if he or she would check a dictionary.

Based on my survey in Beijing, the percentage of correct English signs is no more than a single digit, the rest, if not all, are not regular English by common sense, or simply wrong. Recently, I learned that there is an official website sponsored by “The Office of English Speaking for Beijing Residents ” which was established to promote English speaking among Beijing residents. I even found out two mistakes in that website. The first is: if a freeway cross over another street or freeway, it is called an overpass. The website, however, calls it bridge. When two streets or roads cross each other, it is an intersection, not interchange as the website says. Also in the website, the introduction of Summer Palace is mistranslated. The fact is that three quarters of the Park are water surface. The introduction says, however, “three quarters are under water”. If so, that should be the Dragon King’s Palace, not Summer Palace.

If Beijing Municipal Government really wants to tune all English signs into native tongue, don’t listen to so-called experts who just have short-time visits to English speaking countries, turn to get help from those who have been dwelling in both China and the US or UK for more than ten years.