Now the probable history is clear enough. If there were a smudge or stray mark across this axis of the 'l', it might readily be taken for a 't'.

If we take a small 's' like the example given here,Īdd a longish tail at the bottom left, and make the main body of the letter a bit rounder, it is easy to see how it could be mistaken for a 'p'.Īs for the transformation of 'pool' to 'poot,' both 't' and 'l' have a tall, slender axis. One common characteristic of Chinese Latin-alphabet cursive is relevant here: the lower case 's' is apt to have a long tail hanging down to the left. In particular, I've always been intrigued by Chinese cursive handwriting styles for the Latin alphabet. Rather, it must have been an orthographical mistake.Īs the comments on a recent Language Log post indicate (' Cursive and Characters: Dying Arts,' ), cursive handwriting can vary widely across cultures, even for the same language and writing system. The Chinese text clarifies what the sign points to:īut 'pwimming poot' is obviously not a translation error. Recently, when I was rushing from my room at the Kucha Guest House in Xinjiang (the Uyghur Autonomous Region in the far west of China) through a huge greenhouse to the dining room for breakfast, I was stopped in my tracks by the following sign: Usually an unintelligible or partially intelligible Chinglish sign is due to faulty translation, whether human or machine.

Cursive word translator