China airlines' horrible English
 

So I'm looking at their website and can't help but notice a massive amount of grammatical errors, ranging from simple spelling issue to outright hilarious. I understand English isn't their native tongue, but it doesn't look like China Airlines is putting a native speaker in charge of their English sites at all... no no, more likely a 7yo is writing all these banners and info. Even EVA airways writes better English in comparison. It shows how lack of attention to details a company/airline presents themselves. Should I be worried next time flying China Airlines when there's an emergency but none of the flight attendants speaks English?



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This is quite common in Asia in general, a lot of businesses just don't care to add the expense of native speakers proofreading advertising material before releasing it.

As far as flying CI goes, don't worry their cabin attendants' English is good enough. It's far better than the average cabin attendant on any of the Japanese airlines or mainland Chinese carriers. The level of English encountered on JL and NH frequently is outright laughable (as is the English on their websites). I'm sure they can recite the emergency protocol by heart but I wouldn't expect any dynamic English ability on average from them in unpredictable situations where you have to change and adapt on the fly. But that's more about Japan's attitude toward English proficiency in general, it's not a priority nationwide nor do I expect it to ever be regardless of how international your business needs to be.

As much as I dislike it, I've lived in Asia for so long that i do find it rather annoying. If you are going to advertise in another language then you should make an attempt to structure it correctly. If United, AA, or Delta decided to just use Google Translate for Spanish and Portuguese adverts in Latin America, how well do you think that would go down?

There are heaps of native English speakers in every country in East Asia, but the companies don't care enough to bother. But then there are heaps of Latin Americans (including Brazilian Americans) in the US, so somehow UA, AA, and DL manage to (usually) get it right.

The way that all too many companies in Asia view this is the same as me saying that I want to launch my business development site across the middle east and north Africa tomorrow, so F*** it, I'll just use Google Translate to Arabic and let them (the end users) figure out what the h*** I mean. Absolutely no chance I could find a native Arabic speaker who would accept compensation to do it instead. (tongue in cheek there if you didn't pick up the sarcasm)

I have put out a lot of web content in Japanese, but I have never even once thought about publishing it without referring to a native Japanese speaker first. The sad thing is you don't even have to pay half the time, a lot of people will do it for a couple beers and conversation (I'm not talking about them translating everything, just proofreading and cleaning up). Companies that make no effort whatsoever have no excuse other than laziness and indifference.

I mean there are tons of publishers out there offering proofreading service. A friend of mine does this as a full-time occupation in Omotesandō. She proofreads all day and nothing else. An American boss, no uniforms, flexible work hours, and able to afford a one-bedroom in Tokyo... pretty decent as a fresh college graduate from the states. I'm not sure about the market in Taiwan, but I know there are always English speakers willing to help out when asked.

I personally speak 3-4 languages and write 2. I'm more than happy to help if someone asks (nicely).

As in Asia, majority of boss typically does not value this kind of service is "valuable" to be paid. In other word, if some media department of the company straight up to tell the boss said they need a budget for proofreading, they probably will get fired. Then the proofreading will outsource to local university intern or even via secondary school student who participate in their "make your own slogan" event.

In other times, the value of this proofreading job is just too low, not much people will accept the task when the overall income for the specific task is too low. I believe most offer like several cent per word for this kind of translation and proofread task.

Proper English actually is "speak" not "speaks"

Websites are highly dynamic and often have text that will need to be generated on the fly. Having a functional multi language website is a plus.

This really isn't that bad. And as another comment points out, your English isn't perfect either, so...

Glass Houses,,,stones,,,,, etc.

The purpose of language is to communicate, they can !

Not sure that's necessarily right here.
https://www.dictionary.com/e/none/

Maybe you should just read their Mandarin then?

I hate to be that guy, but some of my fellow English speakers really need a reality check about language in China.

No, it's not. The correct conjugation of the verb "to speak" in this case is third personal singular, hence it is "speaks".

A simple google search would have helped you
https://www.writersdigest.com/editor...ular-or-plural

I guess you didn't actually read the website you referenced

"Sometimes, the “nothing” that none conveys refers to more than one thing: “not any persons or things.” In this situation, none takes a plural verb, e.g., The pizzas we ordered for the party have all been eaten. None of them are left. "