路透社记者Gillian Murdoch／随着奥运会的临近，北京做出了巨大的努力改正菜单和路标上的蹩脚英语，但是这一离奇的语言现象却似乎找到了新的坚不可摧的据点：大街小巷成千上万的T恤衫上。

漫步北京这个拥有1,500万人口城市的街头，你会发现许多人身着颜色鲜艳的T恤衫，上面的英文却让人费解，充斥着拼写错误的单词，甚至让人无法会意的胡言乱语。不过，大部分北京人对此并不在意。

“慢慢的，我对衣服上面印着的话就不关心了。”一位年轻的女性说。她身着一件褐色T恤，衣服上面同样印着一些让人费解的话。她说这件衣服是她在北京西单的潮流店里买的。店主们则表示，多数购买蹩脚英文T恤衫的顾客根本不在乎这些文字的意义。一位名为小方的摊主买的T恤衫上绣着“石头?监狱造”（"Stone walls do prison make"）这样令人莫名其妙的字句。

小方本人在学校里学了12年英文，但她说她只认得个别单词。北京政府一直致力于在奥运会前根除这些令人尴尬的，用法错误的英语翻译，因为预计将有50万名海外游客会在奥运会期间来到北京，政府不希望因为蹩脚的语言而丢面子。

为此，有关部门成立了一条播报“中式英语”的热线，并且投入了大量的资金用于纠正数量庞大的路标招牌的英语用法错误。例如将“Racist Park”（种族主义公园）的路标改为Ethnic Minorities Park（民族园）。“一些翻译让人费解，甚至有些还冒犯了外国游客。”北京人说外语节目的顾问陈林（音）告诉《中国日报》。

尽管如此，对于一些艺术家和专业人士来说，中式英语甚至能激发灵感。“我们都应该收集这些印有中式英语的衣服，因为它们标志了中国历史上的一个特殊时代。”华裔摄影师张欧（音）说。

翻译：彭雅然

Olympics ban cannot break Beijing's love for Chinglish

BEIJING (Reuters Life!) - With the Olympics nearing, Beijing has made heroic efforts to wipe Chinglish off menus and road-signs, but this quirky, nonsensical language has one last, seemingly unassailable, stronghold: the chests of millions.

A stroll down any street in the city of 15 million exposes English-speakers to a parade of brightly colored and mentally baffling T-shirts, whose crimes against grammar range from spelling mistakes to paragraphs of total gibberish.

But most Beijingers don't care.

"I gradually became indifferent to the words," said a young woman, wearing a brown T-shirt adorned with nonsensical sentences as she shopped in the trendy Xidan area in the city's west.

"Everybody wears them. The design and color are most important," she added, declining to be named.

Official campaigns to eradicate embarrassing, erroneous English translations before an expected 500,000 overseas visitors arrive for the Games saw Beijing get serious with Chinglish.

A hotline was set up for the public to report the language, and big bucks spent correcting hundreds of road signs such as the infamous "Racist Park" signpost for the Ethnic Minorities Park.

"Some of the translations are confusing or even offensive to foreign visitors," Chen Lin, a consultant with the Beijing Speaks Foreign Languages Program told the China Daily newspaper.

"As Beijing is developing to an international metropolis, we must change this situation," he said.

BLIND SPOT

For many, the inexpensive shirts sporting the banned language are an irresistible deal, even if their meaning is a mystery.

"It's not a problem. Almost all my shirts have English on them," said another shopper in Xidan whose top was emblazoned with "Seasea Surf" and disordered descriptions of waves.

Retailers who sell thousands of Chinglish shirts every week said most shoppers have a similar devil-may-care attitude.

"The designers just copy the pictures and words from TV. Nobody knows what it means," said stallholder Xiao Fang.

Her current top seller spells out the perplexing message "Stone walls do prison make" in stitched-on sequins.

After studying English for 12 years at school, Fang said she knew some of the words but didn't know their meanings.

"I have forgotten most of it," she confessed. "The teacher just asked us to recite. It's not a good way to learn English."

Inside a 13-storey mall's warren of clothing shops, 21-year old Xinxin's box-like stall is draped with fashionably long white T-shirts all carrying blockish, black English slogans.

She also did not know what the words meant but said she had, on occasion, asked her factory to correct the English.

"If a customer insists we change a word we do it. Twice in the past Chinese and foreigners said the English isn't good. But as long as it's not a bad word, it's no problem," she said.

CLOSET FANS

For some Beijingers who pay attention to the meaning of their wardrobe, Chinglish is inspirational.

"The best Chinglish embodies a kind of childish yet devilish cleverness, which can be lost if one tries too hard to capture it," said fashion designer Scarlet Page, whose sells T-shirts with deliberate Chinglish online.

"There is no way the government can police the T-shirts," she said. "I don't think the average Chinese bureaucrat is even aware of the sheer amount of Chinglish walking the streets."

Seattle-born Page says her favorite is the enigmatically romantic "I've written you letters that I'd like to send. If you would just send one to me."

Others see depths in Chinglish's superficiality.

For her latest project, photographer O Zhang posed models wearing Chinglish T-shirts in front of Olympic icons such as the Bird's Nest national stadium.

For her, the bastard language is a powerful metaphor for, and marker of, the incredible speed of China's development and its desire to catch up with the rest of the world.

"We want to achieve so many big goals, but we are making a lot of mistakes, because we want too many things too fast," New York-based Zhang said.

"We should all collect some Chinglish T-shirts, because they record a special time in Chinese history."