Sunday, February 10, 2008

Continental Airline's Ad with Chinese

I was in George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH) last Friday & saw this advertisement for Continental Airlines.



The translation for Chinese is not exactly correct, or incorrect.



This is because 我的头发冷 can be read in two ways:

1. 我的头发+冷 means "my hair is cold", which is not "my head is cold".

2. 我的头+发冷 means "my head is getting cold".

Whether this was done intentionally or not, it is indeed clever.

4 Comments:

Anonymous Eyedunno said...

Wow, this is my first time ever to see the simplified Chinese for 頭.

Another thing I didn't realize, though, was that 發 and 髪 have been combined in simplified Chinese. I'll have to remember that.

As for the poster, I can only assume they meant the latter translation (我的頭發冷).

6:53 PM  
Anonymous G. Hart said...

I agree. Either way you look at it, it's pretty clever!
I'll have to watch for that ad when I'm traveling

12:14 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

funny also that you never see that type of hat in beijing unless it's carried by a foreigner waiting at the airport for their flight home :)

6:47 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Reminds me of the sign at a hotel: “。。。一次性交10元。。。”

(一次性 交10元 vs 一次性交 10元)

10:13 PM  

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