Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Surfer Dreams is Wet

It never fails, every time I leave the campus I see these hilarious and ridiculous English translations. On signs, on T-shirts, everywhere you look, you see the Chinese slaughtering the English language. I have a few favorites. The first is a restaurant in Wu Dao Kou that has a Chinese sign with an English translation underneath that reads, "Welcome to Here. Happy to Eat."
Another one was a T-shirt I saw a guy wearing on the street one day. It read in bold black letters, "Surfer Dreams Is Wet."
But my all time favorite is the set of instructions on the dryer in our dorm building. Now pay close attention and make sure you get this down. There will be a test afterwards:

1. Weight of drying clothes shall not exceed the rated capacity of the drying machine. Otherwise, clothes will be undried or dried unevenly.

(Not too bad so far, you say? Okay, here's the next one).

2. Downy and woolen clothes shall not be dried with the machine. (Floss will be destroyed and woolen shrinking when drying).

3. When clothes are fully dehydrated, please neaten and make them unwound before drying with the machine. (Please avoid tweaking clothes on hand because lots of water may remain to cause the prolonging of drying and creepage for water leakage).

4. It may be hard for outsize clothes (e.g. overcoat) to overturn in the tumbling box and this may cause clothes to be dried unevenly. When necessary, please overturn them with manual work to help drying evenly.

5. During the drying process, please avoid adding clothes to the machine which may cause clothes overdried or undried.

You got all that? Well, in case you haven't and you need more time, please study it dilligently because according to my language partner Serena laziness is a bad habitat.

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