Daily Lessons from Life 29 April 2011 - Banner boo-boo during Wen Jiabao's visit to Malaysia

p/s: I DID NOT watch the so-called 'Royal Wedding in the UK'. I don't know them and don't really care though as a fellow human being, and since the news was thrust into my face, I wish they all the best. And that they have a better marriage than his mother and father. Amen/Allah/Oh God/Buddha/Chrisna/Greek Gods/Deities/etc...

"Banner boo-boo during Wen Jiabao's visit to Malaysia - AsiaOne Fri, Apr 29, 2011

KUALA LUMPUR - THE high profile visit of Chinese premier Wen Jiabao to Malaysia was marred by an embarrasssing banner at a welcoming ceremony.

The Chinese text on the banner contained several grammar and syntax errors.

The embarrassing banner was prominently displayed at a podium near the Prime Minister's Department in the federal administrative capital for the official welcoming ceremony for Mr Wen.

The words on the banner were a direct translation from a sentence in Malay.

The sentence in Malay was: "Istiadat Sambutan Rasmi Sempena Lawatan Rasmi TYT Wen Jiabao Ke Malaysia" (Official welcoming ceremony in conjunction with official visit of His Excellency Wen Jiabao to Malaysia).

Literally translated, the Chinese words read: "Official welcoming ceremony, with him Wen Jiabao His Excellency's official visit Malaysia".

Chinese-literate reporters and guests, including Chinese Malaysian ministers, at the ceremony were reportedly taken aback.

Netizens who posted the picture online were equally horrified by the boo-boo.

One user, Rubystar_4037 said: "Such faux pas is inexcusable, especially when the big bold letters are beamed across the whole world. I feel very embarrassed."

Others were angry that the Malay sentence was translated using Google Translate instead of consulting an official language interpreter."

I remembered the incident when the USA President Bush Jr welcome President Wu of PRC with the national anthem of ROC (aka Taiwan, part of PRC) and thought the Yank did it deliberately. Here, it definitely looks like incompetence or at best laziness to rely on an American product to auto-translate Malay into Chinese!

Lessons for me are:

1. it is a shameful mistake. It has to be taken seriously. The one who committed the mistake and the one who oversee it have to take responsibility for it and owned up. As to how severe the punishment, maybe the offenders can suggest and the rest of the people in power can decide! There must be consequences for such a big boo boo, honestly. Otherwise, carelessness and incompetence of national proportion will be taken lightly. This cannot be good!;

2. does this incident masked a deeper malaise? has the standard of Chinese dropped to such an appalling level that any person with some knowledge of Chinese will know that the banner does not read right!! When you think about your guest is the PM of the world 2nd largest economy and you are thinking about doing big deals with them, how can you not take that extra caution and that extra efforts to ensure that everything at the welcoming ceremony be perfect? IF you do have the intention, how come you do not have the execution power to pull it through? This is the dilemma that our neighbour, including Singapore, has to ponder hard. Do you or do you not want to trade with the soon to be world's largest economy?;

3. what has been the response from the authority, never mind the response from PM Wen? Will it dismiss it as an anomaly and an one-off or will it take the incident more seriously? If it take it lightly, such mistake is more likely to occur than not. If it take it seriously, the chance of it recurring will be lower as people will be more vigilant and less complacent! Of course, putting it through the high priced professional translator must be budgeted as an item to welcome foreign dignitaries and future benefactor!

May they be able to translate without errors for all future visit of foreign leaders!