Click to enlarge
The Wall Street Journal’s China blog made the cool map above, which shows Beijing’s subway stations translated literally into English. They enlisted that indispensable tool, Baidu translate, to help with the task. Sadly, it’s like a quarter-complete, but whatever, we all know WSJ employees aren’t paid to do fun things.
We kid. (No, we don’t; but this is actually quite fun – Chinese words English-speakers should adopt.)
Real-Time China Report:
Earlier this month, a map of Hong Kong’s MTR system with stations’ Chinese names literally translated into English made the rounds on the Internet, featuring such gems as “Permanent Security” (Heng On) and “Bamboo Basket Bay” (Shau Kei Wan).
That map got us at China Real Time wondering about the literal translations of Beijing’s subway station names. We couldn’t fit all 200+ stations, so we narrowed it down to some with the best translations.
There are some fun ones, such as Puddle of Accumulated Water, Car Man Village, and Cholera Camp. Others are about what you’d expect.
It’s good WSJ didn’t wait until next year to do this, cause then they’d have dealt with this monstrosity:
They should actually do it some more but with better translations. Many Chinese place names are pretty or straightforward and close to what we would find in our own countries: Swansea Road, North Gate Bridge, Three Mile Place, etc.