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Beijing reads the writing on the wall
By Mure Dickie (ft.com)
Updated: 2005-11-18 10:10
English-speaking visitors to Beijing have long enjoyed the city's
entertainingly erratic bilingual signs. Who could resist messages in the
Forbidden City that tell tourists: 鈥淒on't Fall Down.鈥� or the enigmatic emergency
advice to 鈥淏eing Urgent Call 110 Quickly?鈥�
 Such delights could be under threat, however, as the municipal
government steps up efforts to avoid errors and improve consistency by issuing
new standards for bilingual signs used on its transport network or at tourist
and cultural sites.
The effort to improve standards reflects Beijing's determination to use the
2008 Olympics to burnish its reputation as a modern, cosmopolitan city.
Authorities had already acted on at least half of 200 or so problem signs
reported to the city's Beijing Speaks Foreign Languages Programme Office since
May, said office head Liu Yang, who prefers to conduct telephone interviews in
Chinese.
The languages office was preparing the new standards as part of a city-wide
campaign to clean up public signage before the end of 2007, Mr Liu said.
While the languages office has come up with solutions for some thorny issues
such as how to translate the names of bridges on Beijing's ring roads, it could
prove hard to eliminate more basic linguistic errors.
Previous campaigns by the city government have had limited impact, as
demonstrated by the examples of problem signs listed by contributors to the
internet noticeboard set up by the languages office.
They include the sign on doors at Beijing's international airport that reads
鈥淣o Entry On Peacetime鈥� when it means 鈥淯se Only In Case Of Emergency鈥�.
Also reported was the famous street sign that mistranslates Beijing's Ethnic
Minorities Park as 鈥淩acist Park.鈥�
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