Beijing reads the writing on the wall
By Mure Dickie (ft.com)
Updated: 2005-11-18 10:10

English-speaking visitors to Beijing have long enjoyed the city's entertainingly erratic bilingual signs. Who could resist messages in the Forbidden City that tell tourists: “Don't Fall Down.” or the enigmatic emergency advice to “Being Urgent Call 110 Quickly?”

Such delights could be under threat, however, as the municipal government steps up efforts to avoid errors and improve consistency by issuing new standards for bilingual signs used on its transport network or at tourist and cultural sites.

The effort to improve standards reflects Beijing's determination to use the 2008 Olympics to burnish its reputation as a modern, cosmopolitan city.

Authorities had already acted on at least half of 200 or so problem signs reported to the city's Beijing Speaks Foreign Languages Programme Office since May, said office head Liu Yang, who prefers to conduct telephone interviews in Chinese.

The languages office was preparing the new standards as part of a city-wide campaign to clean up public signage before the end of 2007, Mr Liu said.

While the languages office has come up with solutions for some thorny issues such as how to translate the names of bridges on Beijing's ring roads, it could prove hard to eliminate more basic linguistic errors.

Previous campaigns by the city government have had limited impact, as demonstrated by the examples of problem signs listed by contributors to the internet noticeboard set up by the languages office.

They include the sign on doors at Beijing's international airport that reads “No Entry On Peacetime” when it means “Use Only In Case Of Emergency”.

Also reported was the famous street sign that mistranslates Beijing's Ethnic Minorities Park as “Racist Park.”