CHINA: Rich parents in the United States are desperately seeking Chinese nannies to tutor their charges in Mandarin, the language of the future for westerners keen to make inroads in China. Meanwhile, in China, 300 million people are learning English, the language of their future.
Both tongues are de rigueur among the aspiring middle classes in their respective linguistic catchment areas, but both languages are also notoriously difficult to learn.
Betwixt these two heavy burdens of linguistic expectations steps chinglish.com - www.chinglish.com - an online service that translates from Chinese into English and back again.
"Chinglish.com sees its mission in facilitating communication between speakers of Chinese and English. As far as we are concerned, international organisations will only have two official languages of work in the future: Chinese and English. Our portal can save billions of dollars in translation and interpretation costs," said Marius van Bergen, chief executive of the Chinglish website, which launched this week.
"Chinglish's mission is to promote linguistic and cultural exchange between China and the West by creating a virtual internet community in which Chinese and English coexist and enrich each other," Mr van Bergen said in a statement.
Chinglish is a word that means a sort of Chinese-English pidgin. It is so widespread in Asia that it effectively functions as a creole language, but sometimes it does look funny on signposts.
A personal favourite is "F**k the certain price of goods" instead of "Sale Now On", while "Children is not recommended" also rings true. "Enter the mouth", a mistranslation of the Chinese characters for "Entrance" is also very common on signposts, causing blushes.
The Chinese government is running a major drive to standardise the use of English on public signs before the Beijing Olympics in 2008. A group called the "Beijing Speaks to the World Committee" is scouring the capital looking for signs lost in mistranslation. For instance, Beijing's Park of Ethnic Minorities was signposted, hilariously, as "Racist Park". But not for long.