Oops
People’s Daily, the official Party newspaper still scoured by China-watchers for hints as to the leadership’s thinking, was writhing with embarrassment yesterday after a mistranslation led to chaos on the world’s currency markets.
A report on its English-language website saying the government would revalue its currency, the yuan, next week was flashed by news agencies to exchanges in Hong Kong, London and New York.
The dollar sank, the yen rose, and even the Indian rupee rallied, and it seemed as if the Chinese government had finally given in to calls from American politicians to allow the yuan to float higher.
Eventually, late on Wednesday, the People’s Bank of China had to issue an urgent denial that any such move had been announced.
Yesterday, attention focused on a man named only as Han, a retired People’s Daily editor who supplements his pension translating articles into English for the website. This is a new venture supposed to show the paper is moving with the times.
[…] When Mr Han was sent the article, he appeared not to understand it fully…
No shit.
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— Banana Washington May 14, 3:57am # - Off topic, but this reminded me of something: why is it that most Japanese game show names seem to translate to “HAPPY FUN PRIZE-GAME SCENARIO” or something thereabouts?
While we’re at it: do a lot of Japanese have an obsession with feces and pedophilia, or do they just like these things in their comic books and cartoons? d{o_O}b
— warren May 15, 2:39pm # - Back in the days when I worked at a translation agency I had a project to create a bunch of materials for a political delegation heading to China. On a rush basis we designed and translated and fretted. In the end, they got out the door with all of their fine materials.
And then they returned a month later. We found out that the American hosts card was translated correctly but when spoken her name was “Nagging Woman.” Apparently, it became an ice breaker…
I wonder how many folks profited from the news slip? Do they ‘telegraph’ the same way they do in the states? Was it really a PR ploy?
— vaska May 16, 9:08am #
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