Tag Archives: railway

Standardised English - Ji'nan West

Railway English Goals for 2014

Despite my increased presence outside of Beijing this year, as a plan to explore this weird, at times wild, but always wonderful world of ours, I’m still involved in improving railway English for China’s railway system for 2014, and I’ll keep my “non-rail” identity (as in: not working as an official member of rail staff), as I’ve done so in 2013 and in initial efforts back in 2012.

I have to say that China’s railway system has remained mixed with regards to the English enhancement programme. On the one hand, I suspect those who drafted out earlier versions certainly aren’t pleased at their “hard work” being wiped out by a non-PRC citizen interested in pro bono enhancements to society, and the dispute over “Should we call Qingdao’s new station “Qingdaobei” or Qingdao North?” is still at times unsettled. On the other hand, though, we are seeing much improved English at an increasing number of stations around China — customers are now told to “please allow passengers more space” at ticket officers, and riders are being told at Ji’nan’s west station that “international passengers must book at manned counters” (instead of previously no English at all; although even here I suspect the English can still be improved further).

For 2014, these are my goals, which are slightly less on “new features” and more on “maintenance and sustainability”:—

  • Improve English according to fixed standards as approved by the newly-formed independent, multinational board of language experts.
  • Based on China Railways’s unique international ridership, adopt UK English (no longer US English), as UK English is seen much more in multilingual environments, especially in Europe.
  • Create an Internet-based “English on demand” system, and begin work on eventually creating a password-protected database containing the whole English / Chinese rail dictionary / phrasebook.
  • Continue the Everyday Rail English Branding System: keep the Everyday Rail English and Bilingual Rail Info presentation forms (optimise font use where needed), and in doing so, make the railway trains come closer to city metro trains by providing more transfer and city transit-related content.
  • Maintain an open, expansion-based system so that any developments or changes in the national railways system (eg: the implementation of a new ticketing policy) can immediately be reflected, and the necessary English be generated.
  • Eventually down the line — prepare a book of sorts, so that people can have something they can actually put their finger on to improve English. Furthermore, create audiovisual or audio-only content — merely text-based content won’t help all that much!

The idea behind this is: once the whole system is set up, at least for the immediate-short term, it really doesn’t matter where I’m based: everything’s Internet-based, so it doesn’t matter as much if I’m in Beijing, Bristol, or Boston.

Street Level China: Shenyang’s (Seemingly) Missing Rail-to-Metro Links

Details, details, details!

Love this picture of Shenyang’s main station? (Brilliant skies, eh?)

Trouble is there’s no way to get into the station from this end. And this end of the station (which is its southern square) has a Metro Line 1 station. You need a 5-minute taxi ride to transfer from rail to metro here.


Neat Shenyang North station, right?

Big news: Its Metro station on Line 2 is at the opposite square (again, the southern square). This is the north entrance to Shenyang North. Riders are instead directed to the Qishan Road station, a couple hundred metres away.

It’s the total lack of attention to details that make riders feel like they’ve been toyed with. It begets them a bad attitude (especially those from the West). It’s like — Yes, there is a Metro station — right by the station, but you’ll have to walk miles to get there!).

I don’t take this excuse that “oh it’s still under works… (we might be missing the money)…” Cut the nonsense. How much does it take for you to finish up a station exit? Shouldn’t cost you the price of — like — an Apollo mission, right?

Let’s dump the laziness and get those rail-to-metro transfers realised!

So — Why am I Helping the Railways Get Their English in Order?

That’s because I started helping my school clean test-tubes and beakers when I was about 15 over lunch — when I had nothing better to do after finishing my quick helping.

I’m not kidding you. It might seem a helluva strange reason: how do you mix cleaning lab gear with optimising English? But that’s the thing: it’s all about helping out and not “asking for attention”. (My friends in China tell me that this was the thing that was done half a decade ago. These days, if you help out, you’d be seen like an outdated follower of Lei Feng (“the mythical Chinese guy that helped everyone”) if you didn’t leave your name on the thing.)

Like: As of late, one of the trains that’s used my optimised English, train D365 from Beijing South to Fuzhou, got commended by the official People’s Railway Daily. But you never saw any public mentioning that “it was David Feng’s idea to equip the train with bilingual service cards, and that David had to work and retweak the cards, time and again, to get it right, and that David Feng paid from his own pocket to get the cards made ‘for real’, because he wanted the thing on the train ASAP”.

I seriously couldn’t care more. The thing is, I’m helping out because of Chinglish on the trains. Honestly, when you’re told — Please don’t throw the rubbish into the dustbin — you know that something’s gone wrong. Where else can you dump that banana you’ve just devoured? Obviously, the windows are sealed; it’d be suicide to crack these things open at 380 km/h*.

So with China concocting more Chinglish than they’re eradicating it — the rails included — it’s about high time I stepped in to stop the mess. Regard me as the lingo-savvy street cleaner, always photographing Chinglish and always correcting it. For one thing, I don’t like it when my railways scream out with Chinglish on their back. (If you bang into me you’ll see I’m Chinese, irregardless which ID I hold. And I don’t like it when Chinese Railways has to make do with sub-par Chinglish.)

Wuxi East is a cool station, and they’re probably a little cooler with standardised, optimised English all over the place. But nobody’d knew they translations were David Feng works — I deliberately left all traces of David Feng-ness off the thing. Ditto with Xi’an North — if you spot optimised English, that’ll just me doing my thing, sans credits. Oh and the same with Hanzhong and Ji’nan West.

I’m helping the rails get their English in order. (As an assistant professor of English at a key uni in China, it’s about time I did something for real — combining what I teach with what I love.) I’ve been to 22 countries and territories and I know when they’ve right-glish hanging over you in station signs. Obviously, since this is China’s railway system, I’m basing my optimised English on Chinese national norms, but I’m also making an effort to get the English up to speed by consulting with how English is used the right way in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Switzerland, and the UK. (Forget the US — they dumped the rails a long time ago…)

I don’t expect to get paid for this; I’m also not after free rides. (I paid for 34,000+ km of rail travel last year.) It’s a bit of Menschness (a la Guy Kawasaki). I’ll be happy when I slip into bed in the evenings knowing that Chinese Railways have one less sign in Chinglish, and one more sign in optimised English.

For one thing, I’m already happy now that passengers on HSR services to Shijiazhuang are no longer told: “Please don’t throw the rubbish into the dustbin”.

That for one thing sure keeps the rails cleaner!

* Soon. (I’m optimistic.)