Bruce Humes

"Right Bank of the Argun": Italian Rights Snapped Up

This best-selling Chinese novel (额尔古纳河右岸) has now found buyers in the Netherlands and Italy. Visit here for the details.

By Bruce Humes, March 26, 8:14p.m.

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Quotes: Highlighting "local color" or "Chinglish"?

From a report on tainted peas in China published by the New York Times (March 2):

"The outrage over the Hainan cowpeas, the latest in a series of Chinese food safety scandals in recent years, erupted on Feb. 21, when the agriculture bureau of Wuhan, the capital of Hubei, announced that it had destroyed 3.5 tons of toxic cowpeas from Hainan. An urgent nationwide warning was issued by the central government’s Ministry of Agriculture, and within days, cowpeas tainted with the banned pesticide were discovered in the three other provinces.

Officials here in Sanya have criticized the Wuhan officials for breaking an “unspoken rule” that officials in different cities and provinces report problems to each other rather than telling the public, China Daily reported.

The release of the information by Wuhan officials “did not save face for Sanya, nor did it save face for the Ministry of Agriculture,” Zhou Qingchong, an official in the Sanya agriculture bureau, told China National Radio, an official news organization, according to the China Daily report.

Mr. Zhou said Wuhan officials could have told Sanya officials about the cowpeas privately, and Sanya would have sent out investigators.

'Wuhan is really not enough of a friend,' he said."

Chinese speakers will recognize this last sentence as a translation of a popular phrase (tho' not always about Wuhan): 武汉真是不够朋友!

Assuming I am right about the original Chinese, two questions: Does this quote read like "normal" English to you? How would you translate it?

Bruce Humes
Chinese Books, English Reviews

By Bruce Humes, March 2, 6:42p.m.

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