Friday, April 25, 2008

This week's corkers from the studio

No great moments of Chinglish as such this week, but a few inspired spelling foul-ups.

At one point I was called upon to initiate a conversation by greeting my female partner, DD, thus: "Hi, Sop Hail!" Sophia, I imagine, had been intended.

A little later DD, playing a hotel receptionist, delighted in being able to tell me: "I'm sorry, you haven't been fisted under that name."

After that laughter break, we came upon the oddity of a passage about employment practices talking about "out of rice men". Completely stumped on that one. Any help, anyone? Brendan?? I wonder if it's perhaps a Chinese phrase for contract workers, outsourcing ("iron rice bowl" is the standard idiom for being a job-for-life salary man).

Oh yes, it's a fascinating job.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hmm, if those with employment have rice, then those without rice are the unemployed??

Froog said...

No, the context seemed to suggest that they were a category of employees.