Chinglish a linguistic challenge for unsuspecting visitor

Beijing Letter: Driving along the ring roads that circle Beijing, you see some pretty puzzling road signs. What to make of a sign selling a skyscraper as "a wonder of national cream". A public space called "Racist Park". Or what about the exquisite syntax of "No blowing of horn. Keep silence!" Before you even get to the ring roads, the signs are there at the airport. A sign presumably intended as an emergency exit notice reads: "No entry on peacetime".

Waiting in the airport's Starbucks outlet, I was given a "Fresh Fruit Howl" instead of the fruit bowl I thought I was buying.

Tracking down the latest absurd examples of inaccurate English is a common, enjoyable pastime for foreigners in Beijing - several expatriates have set up websites to show off some of the wittier ones.

Messages like: "Cultural relics are irretrievable, please be careful when viewing them". "Notice the rockslide, please is run about by cliff" or "Everybody is responsible to prevent fire calamity" can really brighten your day. Many of the messages are well-meaning, but absurd. "Visit in civilization, pay attention to hygiene" or "Please come down from your bicycle" add an appealing surreal tone to proceedings.

And I still recall with glee landing in Kunming airport in Yunnan province back in the early 1990s to see a sign saying "We welcome our foreign fiends".

The messages can range from the linguistically marvellous to the plain baffling.

"Good person always good luck", "Ancient photo, drink beer" or, perhaps inevitably, "Pubic Toilet".

The garbled English is sometimes called Chinglish, a term generally used to describe the English peppered with Chinese phrases spoken in Hong Kong and Singapore, but particularly apt for the bizarre signage of New China.

The poorly translated inaccuracies often come from an over-reliance on the dictionary, producing archaic adjectives or incorrect synonyms, combined with a complete disdain for grammar.

Companies are the worst offenders - English looks impressive on your sign or billboard, so just slap up any old thing seems to be the way some firms think.

Having English on your billboard gives property developers great cachet, hence ludicrously named housing developments called "Boning Park" and "Merlin Champagne Town".

There are good intentions behind trying to put road signs in English as well as Chinese, for which the government is to be applauded, and generally the road signs are very accurate.

The sign at the Imperial Palace Museum during the winter which reads "Don't fall down" is funny, but also gets its message across to the pedestrian braving the black ice.

However, the abuse of English is getting worse as China opens up and seeks to emphasise its international status by encouraging the use of the most international of languages.

Poor English in public places looks bad and can have quite negative effects.

For example, the "Racist Park" mentioned earlier is actually the Park of Chinese Ethnic Minorities along the Fourth Ring Road. You're not likely to attract too many foreigners by advertising a park for racists to play in.

With the Olympics coming to Beijing in less than 1,000 days, the government is trying to do something to crack down on Chinglish.

Foreigners and residents in Beijing have been invited to send in particularly outrageous examples of strange English to a programme known as Use Accurate English to Welcome the Olympics Public Bilingual Sign Standardization Drive.

The programme is organized by the snappily-titled: "Beijing speaks foreign languages programme office of the Beijing municipal government."

The name is unwieldy, and not entirely grammatically correct itself.

But its main focus is to raise public awareness of what is described as "sloppy work, mainly grammatical mistakes, spelling errors and inappropriate expressions," said Chen Lin, professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University, who chairs the programme's advisory committee.

He describes the English signs in Beijing as embarrassing and says the programme's website received over 300 observations in three months.

Zhou Chen, an official at the programme's office, told the China Daily that the Beijing municipal government has vowed to have all signs in correct English by the end of 2007.

This is aimed at improving the city's image as an international metropolis.

The programme will not just be looking at English and tourism information in other languages will also be closely scrutinised.

The aim is that by 2007, the top eight tourism spots in Beijing will have brochures and audio commentary in seven languages, said Mr Chen.

All very well and good, though it will be a sad day when signs like "Irretrievable Rubbish" on a bin in a nearby park are a thing of the past.

My favourite local restaurant recently redesigned its menu and I can report that "crap in the grass" is no longer on the menu.

While I will miss the day when the bad English signs are a thing of the past, plain carp is more appetising.