Two scholars are hotly debating whether mangled English in China, or "Chinglish," is a blight, or a source of bliss. This blog has already posted about “Chinglish” and the wildly funny mistranslations that stem from it. And before I continue, I do want to point out the extreme difficulty of translating from Chinese to English. Laugh we may at poor translations such as “slip and fall down carefully” – but how well could you express a similar idea in Chinese? 我要收藏 That said, a serious debate has exploded about whether “Chinglish” is an aberration to be eradicated, or a treasure to be protected. According to Chinadaily.com, two scholars, David Tool and Oliver Radtke, have taken very firm – and opposite – positions on the issue. Radtke, who is German, has collected more than 5,000 examples of Chinglish on his delicious blog, The Chinglish Files. His philosophy is “mistakes are there to make ‘em,” and he has recently applied for what he thinks is the world’s first PhD thesis about Chinglish. Tool, on the other hand, is a member of the Beijing Speaks Foreign Languages (BSFL) committee, and argues that botched translation is worse than no translation at all. He participated actively in China’s campaign to clean up Chinglish for the 2008 Olympics, and he guesses that he has corrected at least one million mistranslations in the process. Who is right? On the one hand, here at Language Translation, Inc., we of course support the idea of correct language translation and interpretation. On the other hand, what would we do without the mistranslations that we use to illustrate our point? 两名学者就中国不伦不类的英语，或曰“中式英语”争得热火朝天：是糟塌英语还是提供乐子？ 本网志已经贴了有关“中式英语”的帖子，以及由此产生的充满滑稽的误译。开始下面的话题之前，我想指出中译英中特别困难之处。我们也许会取笑拙劣的翻译，如“slip and fall down carefully”——可用中文怎么才能很好地表达类似想法？ 那么说来，激烈争论的是“中式英语”是该摒弃的失真，还是该保护的宝藏。据Chinadaily.com，David Tool和Oliver Radtke这两名学者对此持有坚定(而对立的)立场。 德国人Radtke在他有趣的网志(The Chinglish Files)上收集了五千多个中式英语的例子。他的哲学是“错误自生自灭”，最近他申请了据他认为是世界上第一个关于中式英语的博士论文。 另一方面，Tool作为“北京讲外语”委员会的成员辩称，劣质翻译比一点不译还糟。他积极参与了中国迎接2008奥运会的清除中式英语活动，他推测自己在活动中更正了至少一百万条误译。 谁对谁错？一方面，在我们Language Translation公司，我们当然支持正确翻译/口译的想法；另一方面，没有这些误译，我们怎么来阐述观点？