• my_hat_stinks
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    6 days ago

    The translation was probably meant to be “do not dump”, it’s an anti-littering sign.

      • my_hat_stinks
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        6 days ago

        A correct translation, sure, but that doesn’t get you to “do not dumb”.

        • y0din@lemmy.world
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          6 days ago

          sure, but a Chinese to English translation service does 🙂

          in the “old days”, the translations where not as good as now, they still are pretty bad if you translate between different languages a couple of times. Babelfish in its time was horrible.

          I believe that the translation services in Asia are not as updated as in other places of the world, they many places does not have access to Google translate for instance. So I guess this is just a bad example of the translation being literate word for word instead of taking the whole sentance into consideration.

          but that’s just my theory and I could be wrong 🙂

          funny either way 🙂

          as an example of bad translations / understandings:

          “In case of fire, do your utmost to alarm the hotel porter.”

          “Please don’t handle the fruit. Ask for Debbie’ (Sign in a greengrocer’s) '”

          “ANY PERSONS (EXCEPT PLAYERS) CAUGHT COLLECTING GOLF BALLS ON THIS COURSE WILL BE PROSECUTED AND HAVE THEIR BALLS REMOVED”

          from the book https://www.amazon.com/Broken-English-Spoken-Perfectly-Collection/dp/1904945074

          it’s quite humorous, and based on bad translations

          (edit: added an example)

          • my_hat_stinks
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            6 days ago

            Japanese, not Chinese. Probably not a literal translation, literal would be something like: here/at here (ここに, kokoni), rubbish (ゴミ, gomi), throw away do not (を捨てないで, o sutenaide), please (下さい, kudasai). Japan definitely does have access to translation services, speaking from experience if you walk up to a public help desk (eg at a train station) and you look foreign they’ll whip out their phone to translate before you can even ask them anything.

            • y0din@lemmy.world
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              6 days ago

              my bad, not that familiar with asian languages and my first guess was Chinese, sorry about that.

              But my guess is stil bad translation, and that the sign might be from a time before instant translation service or even mobile phones. there is a history of these signs from back then.

              Anyways, I have shared my opinion and will leave it at that 🙂

              Have a great day and weekend 🙂