Seems someone else writes Chinese like me!

trevorb, pure "zhonglish" would probably be along the lines of :

”任何有背部、脖子、还是心脏问题的人，或怀孕的女士，必须不坐这个过山车。“ That's pretty much plugging Chinese words into the original warning; to me it's much more intelligible (naturally).

The Chinese on the sign is... something else.

Hi Trevorb I think Tvan's showing us the unintelligible Chinese translation given in the sign.

Yes you and Tvan are right of course; we shouldn't get hung up on the word "ride".

but probable not 这骑 or we are back to the verb problem maybe 过山车 instead.

is 应该不 strong enough? I had though to 必须 as stronger but your chinese is much stronger than mine...

Trevorb, apparently yes. See this thread in the Technical Problems on Site group:

http://chinesepod.com/community/conversations/post/9433

Oh right of course I have visited this post already!

Zhenlijiang - I didn't get to take photos of warnings - something I will attend to next time I go there. I'd rather do that than actually 坐娱乐活动. :-)

Ah Bodawei you would be the one to know something like this.

Did you have any such Warning signs in your post? I'd still like to try to translate it before "cheating", so I'll only go look at your post if you didn't. (Doing something else right now though!)

I'm coming in at the end of a long discussion I've just caught up on - interested by the comment that ChinesePod had already noted that there is no Chinese word for 'ride'. In my group 'Signs - Amusement Park' I use the expression 娱乐设备 - wonder if this adds anything to the discussion? 设备 (or something more general like 活动）convey somewhat the same meaning as 工具 but is less specifically 'mechanical' in tone (I think) - it conveys the meaning that there is a machine you get into but there is also a human element (someone running the machine, someone taking your money.)

But this is just ruminating on the language - the key question is how Chinese people refer to these things (while there may be no direct equivalent of 'ride' they still refer to rides - using verbs like 开 (碰碰车）and 坐 ( 过山车 ).

That seems logical to me, in English we have kind of generalised ride to mean any type of amusement machinery. We tend to call a roller coaster a roller coaster because they are easy to identify but the other whirly upy downy things...... just get lumped into ride.

In this case though it does appear to be a roller coaster so we could get away with just calling it that.

With 上海 getting a disneyland sometime in the nearish future someones going to have to figure out a chinese word for ride though ;-)

Changye/zhenlijiang, thank you both for your careful attention. I guess the answer to my question #3 was that, "说“ does have similarities between its English and Chinese uses.

I'm still not sure why, since there's no general word for "ride" in Chinese, that I would not simply use the specific noun, 过山车.

Hi zhenlijiang

哎呀, I should have read tvan's comment more carefully. You are right. In that case, you can say “你看～吗？” or “你说～吗？”. As for the classifier “项”, probably it might depend on the image of “娱乐工具” in your mind. When you think of the concrete physical image of a roller coaster (as a vehicle), you might say “一个娱乐工具”. On the other hand, you might be able to say “一项娱乐工具” when “工具” indicates “a certain category of attraction”. Just a thought.

Here's my take regarding Tvan's Question 2: This English word "ride" I think refers to the offering of a user experience (the vehicle for such experience being some 娱乐工具). When people pay to enjoy a ride of course they're not paying for the 工具 but for the experience promised. However, because we know there is no Chinese equivalent for this word, for the sake of getting this warning across to people who only read Chinese perhaps we have to compromise and make reference to some subject such as 娱乐工具? But so to me 一项 actually seemed quite appropriate--if only we could find the noun to go with it!

Re his Question 3, I think because Tvan knows by this 工具 you mean "ride", he wouldn't be asking 你所说的“工具”指的是“ride“ 吗？He's asking about his use of “你说～”for "Would you say ...?" here--is that Zhonglish? Not "This 工具 that you said ..."

I think I would tend to first go to 你看～ myself:

你看“工具”跟“ride” 意思相似吗？Would you say that this '工具' is close in meaning to 'ride'? I thought 你说 there might sound a bit more like "So you're saying ... ?".

Hope this isn't completely confusing!

Thx Changye.

Hi tvan

You are right. “项” usually can't be used for this kind of “工具”, so it should be “一种（个）娱乐工具”. I confused “一项娱乐活动” with “一个娱乐工具”. “工具” is "instrument, means, tool" here, just like “交通工具” indicates "transportation tool". As for the Chinese sentence, I would say 你所说的“工具”指的是“ride”吗？ or 你所说的“工具”的意思跟“ride”相似吗？

Hi Changye,

Yeah, I see what you're saying. 可是因为你的中文比我的好多了，我想问你两问个具体的问题：第一，我知道“项”会当量词。但，它会当工具的量次吗？第二，你说“工具”跟“ride"的意思相似吗？

Edit: 第三，in reading my second question above, I can see that I used the verb 说 in a very English manner (i.e. "would you say....). Do you think that's OK or yet another example of "Zhonglish."

Hi tvan

That is merely an objective explanation of the roller coaster, so I think it can be used as a warning, but it's too explanatory for advertisement.

I think Changye's sounds more advertisement than warning (assuming my chinese is good enough to understand it!).

BTW: Does anyone else have a problem doing the rearranging sentences exercise using Chrome?

Hi trevorb. I think it's pretty obvious that the English is a warning; what I meant was, "Is the (@changye's) translation more suitable for an advertisement or a warning?"

I think it is clearly a warning. High impact here means high stress on the body...maybe thats a route?

Yes good question--Changye? I suppose it could easily be either, depending on what you follow it up with?

@changye, 这个句子是个广告还是个警告？

How about this one?

旋风过山车是一项富有刺激性的娱乐工具。

So, "警告：旋风是个剧烈的过山车。" I could buy that. Certainly seems like an improvement over the original.

Actually I'm pretty pleased about that, it goes to show all the effort of learning the language is yet to be replaced by a machine....!

There must be a noun for this type of thing how about 玩车？ A pure guess that my windows ime just happened to exactly produce what I wanted when I typed that in so it may be valid...

I think that I 乘坐 suffers from the same problem as 骑, namely that it's a verb. Maybe 警告：旋风是个高影响的过山车。

Comes out as:

警告：旋风过山车是一种高影响乘坐。任何人与背部，颈部或心脏问题，不能坐这车程。没有怀孕的人应该坐。就用双手按住

Close, but no cigar.

不客气！Oh I'd like to take a stab at it too. Am doing something else at the moment though. This type of bad translation is always about utter insensitivity to the way the original language (English here) works, isn't it.

真奇怪， lets hope it is a transition stage

@zhenlijiang, thx for the link and, as usual, good memory! Or course I have sources, but I hate to go the them without at least trying first.