Let me explain

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Ten don'ts.

I took a little trip along Machang Lu (马厂路) yesterday and photographed the sign with the ten don'ts which I've posted on (the main) Green Bamboo. The tenth of these says 不说服务忌语 (bù shuō fúwù jì yǔ). I wasn't sure what it was meant to mean. I thought it might be some injunction against slander, but it says "Don't say service taboo" which, as far as I can tell, seems to some kind of reference to things you shouldn't say if you work in a service industry. Quite what relevance it has to the sign, I don't know. My thought was that it may just mean, in general, "Be polite when you speak to others" or something like that.

Comments

Anonymous said…
I guess I just assumed 忌语 was a 单词 in its own right. Obviously I was wrong. Interestingly, typing out 不说服务忌语 the computer gives me the exact phrase, but 忌语 doesn't show up at all, I have to really search for it. It looks very slogan-like, which makes it damn near impossible to translate into proper Chinese, let alone English (the only real translation job I ever did was full of this kind of bullshit. Honestly, such language should be outlawed).
14 February 2007 at 23:19
Uncle Angel said…
One line and it requires a three-volume footnote.

Either the Chinese understand it perfectly well but have a hard time explaining it, or they don't understand it at all but won't admit to it.
15 February 2007 at 00:36
Anonymous said…
I've been having problems with live journal too, so I've decided to switch my main blog over to blogspot. You might want to update the link on your blogroll over on that other blog you use.

Oh, and please don't abandon this blog.
3 March 2007 at 19:22
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