"Cow Elephant Chicken Lucky Unicorn Dragon Crane Liu Shallow"
I believe all consumers deserve the right to know what they are paying their money for. One thing I really don't like is seeing someone unknowingly duped into being the butt of jokes. Unfortunately, this courtesy is rarely practiced in the business world.
The shirt above is for sale at ChoiceShirts.com, but there isn't any translation of what the Chinese characters mean. From the picture of the white tiger, most people would think all the characters would have some kind of association with tiger.
牛 = cow, ox, bull
象 = elephant; ivory; figure, image
鸡 = chicken
吉 = lucky, propitious, good
麒 = legendary auspicious animal, mythical unicorn
龙 = dragon
鶴 = crane
刘 = surname "Liu"
浅 = shallow, not deep; superficial
But where is the "tiger"?
Since the manufacturers and retailers are purely focused on making money rather than provide consumers with good quality goods, the only ways to restore balance are:
1. File a complaint with retailer, and demand a refund
2. Force retailers to post accurate translation, and provide linguistic reference links if possible
3. Boycott and inform others about irresponsible retailers
The best rule of thumb for everyone would be: Buyers Beware!
posted by tian at
1:53 AM
12 Comments:
Man 0 man! this tiger t-shirt is a winner! With 9 characters, all wrong, that takes the cake.
Hello, when did it become the seller's responsibility to teach the buyer about his or her product? Sorry, I do not agree. If a buyer is willing to pay money for something they cannot read, then they're on their own. Caveat emptor, and all. If it bothers them, the seller should get an expert opinion before buying. (I.e. someone who can read it.)
-James
Hince the rule of "buyers beware".
James,
I have personally been to my local Urban Outfitters' store and told the store manager that several of their retro Kanji t-shirts were in fact had the characters backwards or gibberish. His response was: "oh, no body ever noticed... I doubt anyone would know either... Who cares..."
That shows you that the retailers never cared about their customers making fools of themselves.
Yep, caveat emptor, and all that. Western people tend to regard representations of kanji and other similar written languages as little more than pleasant works of art. Of course this is mistaken. No one should display text--especially on their person--unless they have a reasonable knowledge of what it means. A lot of otherwise intelligent people make that mistake, sometimes in very amusing ways.
I have heard that a similar phenomenon occurs in the far east with regard to western script.
A friend of mine told me about seeing a woman in China wearing a shirt with a bunch of ducks on it and the caption "fuck fuck fuck fuck."
It does cut both ways.
http://www.engrish.com/
I've seen A LOT of clothing, accessories, etc in China that have random letters printed on them. I knew a university student majoring in English that wore a shirt that read "RCDSDFUG" -- admittedly she hadn't bought it herself, but she said she hadn't given any thought to the writing until I asked her about it.
Engrish.com is dedicated to the misuse of English in foreign countries as well.
I had a girlfriend from Beijing who had a shirt or two that had non-sensical english written on it. I mean just random words. I guess this goes both ways.
When I was teaching English in China last year, huge numbers of my students had t-shirts with absolute rubbish written on them in English. Like Todd, I asked my more advanced students why they'd bought them when they surely knew that they made no sense, and they replied that it hadn't really occured to them until I'd asked, and that they'd bought them because they "liked the colour".
Funnily enough, I was also in a tailors there with my (Chinese) friend, and found a roll of material with rows of tiny Chinese characters on it. I asked her what they meant and she said that they were just totally random characters which, although obviously written correctly, made no sense together. So it even happens in the country where the language is spoken!
"Engrish.com is dedicated to the misuse of English in foreign countries as well."
Yes, but there is a difference:
http://tinyurl.com/o3rmr
http://tinyurl.com/r6vpe
See what I mean?
Engrish.com does not give readers the ablility to leave comments, thus when you search for "engrish.com+idiots", there are few hits in Google.
But, if you do search with "engrish+idiots", you will get many more hits.
It would be interesting to see what happens when Engrish.com starts to let readers leave their comments.
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