When I try to translate English into Chinese and the sentence get longer and longer, then I know I've missed some grammatical construct. The rules of any grammar are to succinctly get the idea across with minimal effort. (The same is true for explanations, if the explanation goes on and on, it's because the idea is a bad one.)
This is especially true in advertising, "short and to the point" is what we should strive for. Here are some cases where "too long is too bad".
Sometimes it's seems using a lot of English is a way of showing off, maybe it is a good marketing ploy.
Maybe not.
The name of this coffee shop is the "Tea of Literature" but it's meaning seems to have been lost in translation. The coffee shop is next to the Taiwan Literature Museum in Tainan. The full sign is:
"When you see the tea literature, You can stay a while. You will find it a beautiful place."
I'm not sure what the point of using the word "formal" here was.
Is English often used as a marketing ploy?
ReplyDeleteIf you want to appeal to the younger crowd, using English has a cache. Older Taiwanese are frightened by the unknown(all old people are frightened by the unknown?) so the clientele self- regulates.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I know for sure, nobody uses Mainland Chinese characters as a marketing ploy.