United Statesian

Dear citizens of the world! The tumultuous events of the past month have kept me away from my blog. Most notably, the earthquake in Japan kept me glued to the screens. Seeing the videos and hearing people's accounts of the quake brought back memories of the 7.6 earthquake I experienced in Taiwan; the feeling of fear that comes from "surfing" a strong earthquake that suddenly grows violent, the 30 seconds that turn into weeks and months, the stories of people surviving after eight days.... What most don't realize is that the tremors continue for weeks and months. After three months of motions sickness from 3,000 aftershocks I was happy to "get off of" Taiwan and onto solid ground. Naturally, the Japanese quake lead me to think of my summer vacation in Norway. What? You say. I don't have any close friends in Japan, but I immediately thought of this very nice, retired Japanese man I met in Flom, Norway. He only spoke Japanese, not a word of English and he ...

Dear citizens of the world, My second blog post continues along the same topic of signs in China. This sign which can be found at the entrance to Tian'anmen square in Beijing has no translation problems. The problem is cultural. The same as Chris's last post , this sign clearly prohibits exploding vehicles...but it also has many other regulations: When cycling towards the "Peaceful Heavenly Gate" square I decided to stop to read the sign and make sure I was not breaking any laws that would get me thrown into the Beijing slammer. The square is surrounded by hundreds or thousands of uniformed police, military, plain-clothed police, video cameras, communist lasers of death, etc... The sign prohibited buses, but there were many buses full of locals and tourists alike. The sign prohibited bikes pulling large amounts of cargo, but lots of them rode by as I was decifering the sign. In the end, I decided to push ahead, sure that I was not breaking any rules and that many othe...

After reading Chris's most recent blog " Lost in translation " I decided to continue the conversation on translations that could be added and expanded. The true problem with translations comes when no cultural equivalent exisits... Bad English or just avoiding copyright problems? There are thousand of cases of mis-translation that have made me laugh and cry over the past sixteen years as an expat...but I will limit this post to the most recent signs I had the time to photogragh during our three-week, whirlwind tour of China and HK. Future posts should bring more anecdotes and bad translations - part of the fun of being an expat; you always know that there will be a chuckle around the corner, or in the toilet... Signs do not need to include bad English to be of interest - differences in culture are usually enough to make a sign interesting: A dog toilet...Hong Kong style: Perfect English, but not the type of thing I would see in Madrid: "Entrance to the right". ....