The double-carriage buses running in urban Wuhan, Hubei Province, provide an English-language service, but passengers might find themselves acting more as cryptographers when trying to decipher its meaning.
Each time a bus approaches the next stop, a bilingual broadcast in Chinese and English is aired to inform the passengers. The Chinese announcement goes just as smoothly as it does on all the other buses in the country, but the English announcement is quite a different story.
Take the Dingziqiao Station for example. The words bounce out from the broadcast like this: "Dingzi Bridge ['qiao' means "bridge" in Chinese] arrives, please take off. Be careful to open the door. Please stand firm and hold well.” According to the Chinese broadcast, the bus company probably intended to say something more like this: "The next stop is Dingziqiao, passengers who are departing should prepare their belongings. Please stand clear of the doors and hold on to the handles for safety."
Another confusing statement one might hear on a bus in Wuhan is: "Please give seats to those who need help" – perhaps a bit awkward sounding, it is actually a broadcast reminding passengers to get up and offer their seats to the elderly, pregnant, young kids, disabled and sick people who may be standing nearby.
Dennis, a 20-year-old Ghanaian, told cnhubei.com that although he had been in Wuhan for five months, it was still hard for him to understand what was being broadcast on the buses. The English service wasn't much of a help, as sometimes he still missed alighting at his intended stop.
Xu Xiwen, an English teacher from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, said, "The translations adopted by public facilities should follow the rules and logic of the English language, or else sometimes the information can hardly make sense."
The fifth Operation Company of Wuhan Public Transport Group Co. Ltd., the owner of the buses, is currently trying to work out a solution for the confusing language that is being broadcast on the road.
(China.org.cn by Wu Jin, August 13, 2009)
