|
Advertising and Marketing
Continental can't speak ChinesePosted by Jeremy Goldkorn, October 29, 2007 11:02 AM
Steven Schwankert was passing through Newark's Liberty International Airport where he took the photo on the left, an ad for Continental Airlines. The ad shows different translations for "my head is cold", linked to different Continental destinations. This apparently proves that Continental can speak any language and is hip and international. But take a closer look at the Chinese translation for Beijing:
Aside from the fact that Beijing is represented by the type of conical hat no one has ever worn in northern China, the translation is rendered as "My hair is cold"! As Schwankert puts it, "you would have thought that by now, Continental would have made enough from its Newark-Beijing route to get someone in its Beijing office to do a proper translation." UPDATE: Perhaps they can speak Chinese after all; a commenter points out that the phrase can be read as wo de tou faleng rather than wo de toufa leng, which is perhaps not a common usage, but is not incorrect... Also worth noting: the first result returned on a Baidu search for the string 'tou fa leng' is this: How to use Chinese medicine to cure a cold penis head. |
Partner Links
Jobs in China
Recent Comments
lyl on
The cult of a Super Girl
Jeremy Gol on
Danwei Canteen: Chestnut Chicken Stew
Gareth on
Gamble your life away in ZT Online
Inst on
The Mouse looms over Shanghai
Anonymous on
Giant Mao Zedong stands alone in the autumn cold
Joel Marti on
A centenarian monk reads the newspaper
China Media Timeline
Major media events over the last three decades
Danwei Model Workers
![]() Recommended blogs and new media
Books on China
Xujun Eberlein's Apologies Forthcoming: Hong Kong's Blacksmith Books has published a short story collection by Xujun Eberlein.
Princess Der Ling: Two Years in the Forbidden City: Two years in the Forbidden City is largely a reminiscence of the minutiae of life for one of history's most powerful women, by one of her court attendants, a Manchu noble's daughter by the name of Der Ling.
Carl Crow's The Long Road Back to China: In 1939 Carl Crow - an American journalist, advertising executive and author who had lived in Shanghai for 25 years until forced out by the Japanese - travelled up the Burma Road from Rangoon to Chongqing on assignment for Liberty magazine - 'the most interesting assignment I have ever been given'.
Front Page of the Day
A different newspaper every weekday
From the Vault
Classic Danwei posts
+ New Years Past: Other Spring Festivals by Geremie R. Barmé (2007.02): Sang Ye interviews two people about their experiences during Great Leap Forward-era Spring Festivals. Translated and annotated by Geremie R. Barmé. + Trend-spotting in online fiction (2007.06): An interview with Daniel Dan Fei (丹飞), publisher of Notes on Graverobbing (盗墓笔记), Rear Palace (后宫), and Those Ming Dynasty Things (明朝那些事). + China's 50 Most Beautiful People (2005.03): The Beijing News borrows a picture of Maggie Cheung from Cosmo for the cover of today's Entertainment insert, "50 Most Beautiful People in China". Ms. Cheung takes the top spot, with Takeshi Kaneshiro, Little S, Zhang Ziyi, and Liu Ye rounding out the top five in this exercise that is a conscious imitation of People magazine's yearly rundown.
Danwei Archives
Danwei Feeds
Via Feedsky
or Feedburner |






Comments on Continental can't speak Chinese
And you would think that there are enough native speakers in China to mean that there wouldn't be a group devoted to bad Chinglish signs on Facebook. So it goes both ways, right?
Actually, isn't "faliang" the actual phrase there, and not "toufa"?
In that case the translation is correct.
The translation is correct. It's just a bit confusing. 我的脑袋发冷 is a better translation.
发冷: fālěng v.o. feel cold/chilly
我的头很冷 would be more correct, tho.
I think the translation is correct and appropriate. "发" is a pretty standard way to describe conditions such as "发冷","发热","发烧". Re: the previous comments, "脑袋" is fairly colloquial and therefore not suitable here, and "很冷" only describes one condition, i.e. very cold.
I would guess that most people who read 我的头发冷 would think that it meant "My hair is cold". "My head is cold" is correct, but only when someone points it out that 我的头发冷 could mean "my head is cold" does it become apparent.
It's not good to have a sentence that can be understood in 2 ways on an ad but as this is for the benefit of Americans mostly, it does not make too much of a difference. I think the cultural connotation as shown in the Baidu search is more of an issue, as is the choice of hats which gives a very wrong idea of Beijing (how about a Mao cap?).
um. do chinese men commonly suffer from "cold penis head"? and how is it that 六味地黄丸 cures the problem?
Note that in Hong Kong or Taiwan there would be no confusion as among full form characters the 'fa' is written differently in toufa and faliang. I guess this is ad was originally written for Taiwan or HK, and then just switched into simplified characters for the mainland. (Which also explains that hat that you say they don't wear in Beijing.)
Normally such confusions are unlikely when switching from full to simple form characters (although the can more occur more frequently in the other direction), so I'd say Continental is just a bit unlucky here.