ENLIHS SPELING AND TRANSALTOINS

When we first arrived in Taiwan, we were surprised by the amount of English we saw on signs, t-shirts, etc... We are so thankful the Taiwanese have taken the extra step to label so many things in both Chinese and English. This alone has made our lives here 100 times easier. One thing that always makes us chuckle regarding this, however, is the spelling we see. There are many things that contribute to their sometimes confusing letter choices and arrangements.

First, sometimes the Taiwanese are trying to spell out Chinese sounds/words. For example, we’ve seen the name of the city we live in depicted eight different ways in English: Douliu, Douliou, Dou-Lui, Dou-Liou, Touliu, Touliou, Tou-Liu and Tou-Liou. Because English sounds and Chinese sounds don’t correlate exactly, it’s often hard for the Taiwanese to choose just one English spelling in situations like this.

This issue was very confusing for us at first, especially when the same organization spelled things different ways. For example, the Taiwan Railway Administration spells Douliu one way on their website, another way on their automatic ticket booths and a different way on their signs. At this point, however, we’ve thankfully gotten a little savvier.

Secondly, it seems a lot of people throw English on their signs or menus without getting it checked by a creditable source. Now, we have absolutely no problem with this...we are obviously not in a position to be upset or annoyed about it...it just really surprised us initially. Apparently we had the assumption that if businesses, schools and organizations were going to spend a significant sum of money on products, they would make sure everything (Chinese and English) was correct on them. Well, that assumption of ours has been challenged. :)

When it comes to translations...often times they’re humorous. Sometimes their titles are vaguer than ours and sometimes they’re much more direct and literal. Oftentimes the word choice is interesting. And, in many cases, the translations are simply confusing.

With the intentions of helping you understand and hopefully passing on some lighthearted humor, we’ve posted some pictures below. (Hopefully you can read the words in them...we made the pictures a little bigger than usual.) Allow us to emphasize one more time how much we appreciate all the English we see here, regardless if it’s correct or not. :)

Just a taste...