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Translation Fails: WeChat Edition

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Language is one of the most interesting, beautifully complicated things that everyone in the world has the opportunity to experience.  Culture, language, understanding of self, and time are inextricably connected, and in order to really learn another language one basically has to completely change the way he thinks about himself, others, and the world. But languages are hard to learn (unless you've got some kind of crazy language-learning gift, which I'm totally not jealous of except I am), and usually it's just easier to go to a dictionary or the internet for a quick, direct translation from some other random language to your own.  They're handy, they're quick, and they're not usually very accurate, which can result in anything from frustrating communication breakdown to mass hilarity. Today's post is hopefully the latter. Most people already know how hilariously inaccurate Google Translate is sometimes (check out Malinda Kathleen Reese's YouTube...
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Welcome!

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Welcome to That Wai Guo Ren Life ! This blog is an expat (the "wai guo ren's") perspective on living in Mainland China.  It's a place where I can discuss my experiences of living and working in a culture and a country that's quite different from my own, with insights, funny stories, and anecdotes that are hopefully both intriguing and helpful for anyone who is considering visiting or living in China.  Even for those of you who have no desire to come to China I hope that you'll learn a bit more about the Chinese, their rich culture and history, and see the world with a new lens in your "worldview glasses" through reading this blog. New posts will be published once a week, usually on the weekends.  In the meantime, feel free to explore around in the About and Photos tabs, and please check back again! - Soli Deo Gloria! - Chrisi
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The Chinglish Gallery

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There are so many things I love about China: food, culture, history, landscape, cityscapes.  But so far I've been only posting about serious things, so today (like everyday, honestly) is a wonderful day to talk about the one thing in China that never fails to make me smile (and snort sometimes). In English, we call it "Chinglish."  Maybe there's a Chinese word for it - I don't know - but it basically just means that someone shoved some Chinese characters into Bing Translate and didn't bother to check if the English that came out actually made sense. Sometimes it's just unfortunate spelling errors. Sometimes you can figure out what they most likely were trying to say. Sometimes you got nothin'. Either way, it's super fun to see how two languages (Chinese and English, in this case) are so different that direct translation results in nothing less than pure shenanigans.  This post contains some of my absolute favorite examples of Chinglish th...
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