Introduction
I think there is something beautiful and mystifying about the linguistic liminality of Chinese ideas rendered in English vocabulary.
Some call this Engrish: a failure of East Asians to translate their language into intelligible English idiom. Presumably this results either from the attempt to translate some Chinese idiom directly (direct translation between languages generally fails no matter the case), or from an attempt by the author to realize an imagined idea of English idiom for marketing purposes (so-called “decorative English,” like the Chinese walking around with shirts that just say something absurd like “ACNE”—yes I really saw this on some girl's shirt). To a native English speaker like myself, it is often unclear from which cause Engrish originates. But I think identifying the cause is besides the point. What interests me is the result — which either due to its bringing together available English terms in the attempt to render a not-easily-translatable Chinese idea, or by demonstrating the faulty ideas that Chinese have about English idiom — strikes me as a kind of profound poetry in its evocation of ideas foreign to standard English.
Anecdotal experience suggests that Americans regard this phenomenon silly; they find that the resulting language does not conform to their expectations of what idiomatic English looks like, and then right it off. And in truth, my point here is that these translations or “misuses” do fall short of idiomatic English—but where other people see nonsense, I see an opportunity for new meaning. Rather than strain to guess what the Chinese author meant to express in their original language, or laugh at how poorly they grasp “proper” English, I look in the between-space, at the original ideas made possible by the innocent malapropisms and syntax.
We could reach for the intended Chinese meaning, and guess perhaps that it would be something like “indulge your imagination”; but I find that uninspiring. Enjoying my imagination to me denotes the act of finding real pleasure in my imagination, for instance in the interior fantasy life and commentary that is constantly running parallel to my actual lived experiences. What would allow me to best enjoy my imagination thus conceived? Perhaps the relaxation afforded by grand physical comfort, as depicted.
This is just a brand name for facial tissues and possibly not a true case of translation error, but I think it is worth playing with anyhow. There are so many possibilities here: does my mind act upon yours, and yours upon mine? Does it do this directly through argumentation, or subtly through subconscious cues? Alternatively, what if a mind acts upon itself, honing its own operations and creating new attitudes and mental outcomes in a recursive process?
Student Essays
I notice that essays by our younger students (not unlike their American counterparts) are peppered with vocabulary that is contextually wrong, largely I believe a result of students clicking the “synonyms” button in MS Word. Yet, I find these “mistakes” amusing and full of possibility. Example: one student was describing being in a music recording studio, and used the phrase “sealed in a hermetic room.” Although English idiom gives me to understand that this use of hermetic is almost certainly not what the student is actually trying to describe, I find the description nonetheless poetic. The image of this poor 14 year old locked in a NASA airtight chamber, forced to perform his music, is moving in its metaphoricity.
Conclusion
Ultimately, I feel as though encountering these “mistakes” brings me back to my childhood, where hearing something new put into my head an image that was incongruous yet, to a child, perfectly sensible.
