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Beijing’s Olympic Task: Serving Up Gold-Medal English
Beijing’s Olympic Task: Serving Up Gold-Medal English
As the Olympic athletes approach the Beijing starting block, it’ll be down to the wire for athletes of a diferent sort: The Beijing Speaks Foreign Languages Programme (BSFLP). That committee is tasked with upgrading the quality and accuracy of the English that appears throughout the capital, from public signage to menus, all in time for the games.
How daunting is the task? Consider the dining hall (餐厅) that was mis-rendered in English as “Translate server error”:
http://adweek.blogs.com/adfreak/2008/07/then-well-grab.html
To quote Adweek, that gem of computer translation takes the cake!
