Pinyin surely is important (政府机构英语告示)

Ups, I cannot edit initial posts.

The 政 was cut off during posting....

政府机构英语告示

Hi miken,

A nice English saying! That is a good excuse for an old guy just like me. I've found a good Chinese translation for the phrase on the net.

心有余而力不足。

henning says

3 hours ago

Ups, I cannot edit initial posts.

That is possible, you just have to go via the Me section and select the posts tab, then it shows you a list of started topics and you can click on the pencil icon to edit. It seems you can edit posts from the past 3 months.

Just tried a test on one of mine and it's worked but it changes the posted time rather than adding a 'edited on..' time.

It jumps to the top of the conversation list as well, so it's a good way to revive an old topic without actually posting anything new. ;)

Gee, I can't open the link. Does the webpage contain a national secret or something like that?

changye - It works for me. I'm using Safari on a Mac on a cable internet connection in New York. I'm not sure which of these details makes the difference.

Hi frances,

Thanks for the reply. I tried Firefox, IE7, Gladder, and some other proxy servers, but no success. The problem should be that I'm in China! It's highly possible that the webpage contains the top-secret information of the CCP.......!

Changye, it's a news site, so that seems like a likely theory, though in this case it's pretty tame material - just some Chinglish photos. You might be able to see the photos, though. They're on another news site, so good luck.

http://img1.bbs.163.com/baoliao/gz/gz_fmks/077a6498ec0ec854777d61ab3555c48d.jpg

http://img2.bbs.163.com/baoliao/gz/gz_fmks/be466b94699ab023c0c95199a79a72ab.jpg

I was wondering what you were talking about on the page, but then I scrolled down. Ahh, probably better than direct Chinese to English translation.

bazza,

thanks, that worked.

changye,

sorry for posting a link to a blocked site. But as francis said: it did not have much educational value anyway.

Just a Chinglish government announcement interspersed with Pinyin for characters that the translater obviously did not find in her or his dictionary.

Hi henning,

You can also easily find such weird "Egnlish" in Japan.....Japanglish!

Does this work for you (only the pictures, not the article with the commenting and the background info)?

And remember, never ever push Wei.

Hi henning,

Thanks for the brilliant English. I feel a bit relieved, since Japanglish might perhaps be only slightly better than this Chinglish. Anyway, I must admit that Chinese is really a word-saving language. You know, if you translate, for example, that notorious, or funny, 八荣八耻 into English, how many words (and lines) would you need? "口号"就是中国人的拿手好戏啊！

Hi changye,

How about this for a word-saving translation

"The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak"

to 酒强肉淡.

Hi frances,

I tried both links, and  http://img1.bbs.163.com/
but without success. Thank you, anyway!!