A reeeeaaally bad translation
Posted by jeff on 10 Apr 2007 at 09:03 pm | Tagged as: News, Translation
I saw this on Digg the other day (also picked up by a Canadian Chinese language paper). A lady had ordered a dark-brown couch, only to get it and find that the label said its color was “nigger-brown.”
Whaaaaat????
It turns out the couch was made in China. Now I’ve seen enough bad translations to not be suprised by anything I see in English here, but they had to know what that meant, right?
A quick Baidu search for that offensive adjective showed otherwise. It’s mentioned all over the place as an acceptable translation of 深棕色, otherwise known as “dark brown.” Four people on this Baidu forum give n-brown as the most preferred translation! They even give a link to a dictionary entry that supports this translation! I only saw one search result that cautioned against using that translation. Other companies come up on the search that officially use this word as well.
A google search turns up an old prospectus for a school at Oxford that describes the school uniforms as being n-brown. I can only guess that this used to be a widely used term, which carried over into China back in the day, and during all those years of separation from the west the dictionaries kept giving that as the proper translation. I suppose as a good netizen I should register on all those forums and try to make sure no one else makes that mistake again.
Interesting and a warnign to us all.
One minor quibble - the school referenced isn’t in Oxford but, apparently, in Wolverhampton (which is near Birmingham). The confusion resumably arose from the reference to Oxford University examiners, but in fact schools could choose which body (from a list of recognised examiners) they wished to use, They did not have to be nearby.
In the UK, at least, n-brown was commonly used to describe a shade of dark brown until around the 1970s or 1980s. Few (white) people thought anything of it at the time.
out of date references are to blame in this case. Really, many chinese are not sensitive to this kind of translation due to lack of understanding of western cultures. We should provide feedbacks to the manufacturers there whenever we spot something like that.
I was having a conversation with a French friend while in India. I had told him that my last girlfriend was of Mexican extraction (I’m American). He said “She was a wetback?” I said, “WHAT? Why the hell would you say that? That’s really awful!” He apologized profusely and then said his English teacher told him that “wetback” was the standard word for Mexican immigrants in the US. He said when he got back to France, he’d ‘inform’ his teacher.
haha, every well educated chinese knows n*** is a really really bad word for african americans. i do not agree with that out-of-date references to be the excuse of careless thoughts to another nation and being stupid. not every chinese will make the same mistake. i dono where did you get the information laogong,you shallow big eyes cutie bendan, but i never heard N-brown in my life time!!!! and of course i am smarter than you,haha!!
ai ni~
sorry, grammar mistakes.i am not perfect!