China:Does the slogan "Shangri-La is in you mind, but your buffalo is not" make you want to visit a new nightclub in Beijing called the Buffalo Club? What is the visitor to the Olympic city for 2008 to make of the sign "careful landslip attention security" at Beijing airport? Or "the slippery are very crafty" - better watch your step.
Municipal officials have been trying to address the problem of ludicrous English phrases, poorly mistranslated from Chinese, on billboards and road signs for a number of years but with less than 500 days to go to the Olympics, they're getting serious.
Half a million foreigners are expected to arrive in Beijing for the summer games, and the city fathers are not going to let their €30 billion investment in rebuilding the city become a laughing stock because of lazy advertisers and linguistically challenged taxi drivers.
Liu Yang is the head of the city-sponsored "Beijing speaks to the world committee", which is working to clean up bad use of English. They are planning to set up a hotline to report bad English, such as "oil gate" to describe a petrol station.
Mr Liu said 33 per cent of Beijing's 15 million residents speak some English, a claim that was challenged by a local reporter from China's state-run CCTV.
Some 300 million people are learning English in China, and the standard has improved dramatically in recent years. Taxi drivers are also starting to speak the language, as recently recorded in these pages.
Last year, 6,500 "standardised" English-language signs were put up on Beijing roads. Given how little effort Western countries make to accommodate their Chinese residents, the action is to be applauded.
"We will pass the message on to authorities in the advertising sector," said Mr Liu. "If English translation is needed, it must be subject to the standards set forth in the regulations."
Some of the city's landmarks of humour are gone. Beijing's "Hospital for Anus and Intestine Disease", a bright beacon in the central business district has been toned down to read "Hospital for Proctology".
In restaurants, "complicated cake", "pee soup", "five sliced things", "dumpling stuffed with the ovary and digestive glands of a crab" and "crap in the grass" are also on the way out.
