Sometimes, the characteristic quirks and foibles of Chinglish can arouse vexation or paranoia in the long-suffering foreign resident. Many of them seem just rather too conveniently supportive of the national predilection towards obfuscation and evasiveness.
Take the passive voice, for example. The Chinese are not good with verbs in general; but the idea of making verbs passive seems to escape them completely. However, their penchant for invariably using the active voice with inanimate subjects nicely divorces the thing - and the associated action, or lack of action - from any human actors. Hence the implication: this is just something that happened; no-one is to blame.
A few weeks ago, I had applied by e-mail for free tickets to a concert which were supposedly being distributed by one of the embassies sponsoring the event. After a couple of days, a Chinese staff member sent me the disappointing answer: "Sorry. The tickets are not providing." - a formulation that deftly avoids telling someone what's actually happening here. Do you mean "We can't provide you with tickets" or "We haven't been provided with the tickets"? The tickets don't provide themselves, you know; someone has to do the providing. Or not.
No comments:
Post a Comment