Engrish...Chengrish...Take Your Pick

A few days ago a colleague passed along a draft copy of the instruction book for the product on which I'm currently working. I read through the email trail and discovered that an individual in China had written the book and was requesting edits.

I read through the instruction book quickly and discovered that it sounded like many instruction books produced in China these days -- a sort of half English, half Chinese mix. I checked the document for technical errors and then passed it along to my wife, the English teacher, to look for grammar mistakes. It made sense to me that she could greatly improve the readability of the document and make our instruction book read as though it had been originally written in English.

She made approximately 6000 suggestions.

This afternoon I walked over to the young woman's desk who produced this instruction book here in China. She was very nice, and she was excited to see what changes I would suggest. I showed her the book that my wife had edited.

Once I revived her and put her eyes back into their appropriate sockets, I discovered that she really didn't speak very much English at all. I have little understanding of how she was able to produce this document in English to begin with, but I was given a clue when I noticed what appeared to be some sort of translator software on her computer.

She agreed to make the suggested changes, and in the end, she was excited to have the help of my wife. Perhaps this will make the next instruction book she writes that much easier.