Lost in Translation

Marni and I were on the hunt for some badly translated t-shirts while in China. While we never found some for sale, there is a few that we saw on other people that were quite funny.

Basketball is very popular in China. You may be a huge fan of the NBV's Miami HFAT or Orlando MHGIC or the L.A. LACERS. All shirts were very popular.

Maybe you are into exercise. To motivate yourself you live by the mantra 'No Paint, No gain'.

You could be into top designer labels like, Kalvin Clein or Parda.

Then, on the train- not a t-shirt, but in the bathroom you were warned "not to flush while meeting emu". We have no idea what that could have ever meant.

While at the museum in Xian there were signs marking the ancient pottery. All three said "Plate with depiction of bear". Great, meanwhile one plate has a bear, one has a fox and the other a turtle. the explaination in Mandarin was correct, the translation was a tad off.

At the zoo we learned that a Walrus is a large fish found in the amazon river of South America. Hmmm.

Inuit use caribou to pull sleds. Maybe they do.......I don't know.

One of the greatest 'feel good' set of signs we saw were the Stay off the grass signs. They were not that blunt but were messages such as "Budda deserves your peity. Do not destroy the beautiful nature". "The grass brings beauty to your life and should be respected". "Share your environment with others.", etc. There were many others that were wonderful to read.

All these signs were lost on the Chinese, though. At the zoo, the 'Do not feed the animals' sign was followed....unless you talking about the ostrich. Then, you could feed them chips. Or zebra. They were not fed but letting your son piss into there enclosure while almost getting his dick chewed off by a wild donkey was fair game. Oh yah, and Baboons like Sprite. Who knew?

And I did learn how universal teh F-word is while a "Taxi Driver" tried to load our bags into his "cab" at the train station. Zoe got right into it by grabbing the suitcase and pulling it away from him. Caden was truly upset by the man then all the other Cabbies got pissed off at the guy. Then, a legitimate cab offered to take us to the hotel. Mental note....blonde kids crying is a great way to get anything.....except toys from his parents.