11 December 2008

Oops


The Max Planck Institute has a bit of egg on its face according to the Independent. It wanted Chinese classical texts to adorn its journal, something beautiful and elegant, to illustrate a special report on China. Instead, it got a racy flyer extolling the lusty details of stripping housewives in a brothel.

There were red faces on the editorial board of the MaxPlanckForschung journal after it ran the text of a handbill for a Macau strip club on the front page of a special issue on China. Instead of an elegant Chinese poem to gracing the cover ity ran a text effectively proclaiming "Hot Housewives in action!" on the front of the third-quarter edition. Their "enchanting and coquettish performance" was highly recommended.

The use of traditional Chinese characters and references to "the northern mainland" seem to indicate the text comes from Hong Kong or Macau, and it promises burlesque acts by pretty-as-jade housewives with hot bodies for the daytime visitor.

The Max Planck Institute was quick to acknowledge its error explaining that it had consulted a German sinologist prior to publication of the text. "To our sincere regret ... it has now emerged that the text contains deeper levels of meaning, which are not immediately accessible to a non-native speaker,"

True or not it’ still amusing!

8 comments:

billie said...

:) :) :) made me giggle quite a bit :)

Welshcakes Limoncello said...

Haha! Serve them right for not calling a propwer linguist in.

CherryPie said...

Probably true! Made me smile :-)

jams o donnell said...

THanks! It certainly is a good one!

James Higham said...

a propwer linguist in

Yes, they should have had one of those.

Sean Jeating said...

Plaised be Max-Planck-Folschung! Gleat covel. Now I am looking forwald to the Gelman tlanslation.

The postman only yesterday delivered my German exemplar. Haven't checked, yet, however I heard it includes a field study in which ten million Chinese men were confronted with following question:
Do you have fair elections in China, too?

And one million times they got the same answer:
'Elections? Oh, yes, evely molning, evely molning.'

Sean Jeating said...

Collection: Please lead the foulth wold in the second line as 'folwald'.

jams o donnell said...

Gah Sean!!! are you sure you are not erally dear Dr Stu???