Sunday, February 10, 2008

Continental Airline's Ad with Chinese

I was in George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH) last Friday & saw this advertisement for Continental Airlines.



The translation for Chinese is not exactly correct, or incorrect.



This is because 我的头发冷 can be read in two ways:

1. 我的头发+冷 means "my hair is cold", which is not "my head is cold".

2. 我的头+发冷 means "my head is getting cold".

Whether this was done intentionally or not, it is indeed clever.

5 comments:

  1. Wow, this is my first time ever to see the simplified Chinese for 頭.

    Another thing I didn't realize, though, was that 發 and 髪 have been combined in simplified Chinese. I'll have to remember that.

    As for the poster, I can only assume they meant the latter translation (我的頭發冷).

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  2. I agree. Either way you look at it, it's pretty clever!
    I'll have to watch for that ad when I'm traveling

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  3. funny also that you never see that type of hat in beijing unless it's carried by a foreigner waiting at the airport for their flight home :)

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  4. Reminds me of the sign at a hotel: “。。。一次性交10元。。。”

    (一次性 交10元 vs 一次性交 10元)

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  5. I think the hat mentioned for Beijing should be in the style of Vietnam...
    And for the translation of "My head is cold" in written Chinese, it should be 我的頭很冷. In Cantonese (a spoken language in Hong Kong and Canton area of China), it is 我個頭好凍

    (All the Chinese characters above are in traditional Chinese)

    From Hong Kong
    Ruby

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