Use of English and Chinese in Alibaba’s Alipay Advertisements | Hacker News Reader

Use of English and Chinese in Alibaba’s Alipay Advertisements

languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu

51 pointsmcenedella15 comments

I think the analysis may be interesting to readers who can't read Chinese, but I don't think the author has taken the time to analyse the phrase in the context of advertising, and I don't think the conclusion is at all surprising.

To begin with, I tend to disagree that the alternative the author suggested ("yīqǐ Zhīfùbǎo 一起支付宝") is catchier. Using "let's" in this context does forgo rhythm but it's also a lot catchier when it's read out in an advertisement for exactly the same reason—I would argue that people remember it because of the sudden interruption introduce by the disruption in rhythm and change in language.

In fact, if this multiscriptal advertisement was carefully designed (instead of the designer thinking that it's simply cool), I would go as far as arguing that they only want people to remember the second half of the phrase, "let's 支付宝".

As for the conclusion that "[Alipay] wanted to sound international, since Alipay has global aspirations", as I mentioned earlier, I don't think it's at all surprising.

Growing up in Hong Kong, multiscriptalism in advertisements has been around for as long as I have been alive and the purpose, at least for as long as I have been able to understand the purpose of advertisements, has always been to either make a product appear to be hip and cool and/or international.

If there are any designers on HN interested in multilingual design, I recommend the book "Type Hybrid: Typography in Multilingual Design".

https://www.amazon.com/Type-Hybrid-Typography-Multilingual-D...

Are they trying to make "let's alipay" a slogan? if that were the case I would definitely agree with you but with a single example it is hard to say for certain either way.

If you are referring to just the slogan for this particular campaign then I would say yes (I don't think they are trying to make it a universal Alipay slogan in all Chinese-speaking countries).

The calligraphic font used for the phrase in question in that advertisement is commonly used for slogans or take-home message in modern Chinese advertisements. The placement of the phrase also suggests that it's a slogan.

Other images from MTR Advertising[1] also seem to suggest that it's the intended slogan of this campaign, too.

[1]https://www.facebook.com/mtradvertising/photos/a.15944807239...

China is probably unique in that you can allude to ancient literature in marketing materials and expect large portions of the educated population to get it. Kids all over the country learn to recite old poetry from a very early age.

Every educated man would have been familiar with the Bible and classical literature in Europe and the Americas until the 1960s or so. The western world, Latin Christendom and its descendants, had a canon which could be assumed common to all and alluded to for a long, long time.

Newton’s Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica was published in 1687. Dante’s Divine Comedy was the first celebrated work of literature published in the vernacular, in 1320. Latin was the sole official language in Hungary until 1844.

The West’s ignorance of history is really quite recent. Matriculating at a university without Latin or Greek would have been impossible until at least 1880, conservatively.

That is to say, kids learn exactly the same ancient poetry; there's a very uniform curriculum I take it. They certainly don't learn every ancient poem.

Which I don't mean as a criticism; the reverse. In our culture much of the Bible, Shakespeare, and selected Latin and Greek mythology formed a common base for discourse for the same reason not that long ago - before movies and TV.

I know that in Japanese, that language's equivalent of “let's” is very frequently used, in fact it's a not even a phrase, it's a particular verb ending in the grammar. Does Mandarin Chinese have an equivalent?

The best equivalent to the let's verb conjugation in Japanese is adding 吧 to the end of sentences.

I could not follow why 「支」己 is to be translated as "Pay Pal".

不明白為什麼，把「『支』己」翻譯成「Pay Pal」。

“支” means pay in several Chinese phrases, corresponding to Pay in “Pay Pal”; “支”己 (zhi ji) is phonetically identical to 知己，which means good friends, thus corresponding to the word Pal in “Pay Pal”. “支”己 is a coined word and here can be considered as a good friend in payment, which is lexically similar to Pay Pal.

Thanks. That was a great explanation.

English translations on cheaper end, especially manuals for electronic appliances tend to be awesome and Heavy Metal.

ONE MUST TAKE THESE STEPS TO ENSURE PLEASANT EXPERIENCE TO FOLLOW WHILE HOLDING THIS PART INSTEAD OF DEATH BY PAIN OF ELECTROCUTION.

Hell yeah, it is just a 9v adaptor!

Sometimes you get a consistently mistranslated word, too, like "order" -> "baby" on an options page.

"Shop past babies"

"Track baby shipment"

"Create new baby"

"Return/Exchange defective baby"

I think it's funny and fun. And I like to think that people on the other end of my google translate monstrosities feel the same way.

My favorite example of a weird mistranslation was an old Google Translate bug, long since fixed, when doing Spanish -> English.

If you typed in “amistad,” it would spit out “friendship.” So far so good. It even translated punctuation. “Amistad!” came out as “Friendship!” Adding exclamation points to the input added them to the output. Amistad!! -> friendship!! Amistad!!!!!! -> friendship!!!!!! But if you used exactly five exclamation points, no more and no less, it would instead translate to “murder!”

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