Right or Wong?
Observed on Queen's Road. The first time I passed this sign, it stopped me in my tracks, and my first impulse was to run upstairs, knock on the office door. It was my native English speaker duty to clue in these hapless designers..."Hey you guys! You need to lose an "R" here!"
For those of you non-Chinese readers, a quick translation. "Wrong Design" appears to be a failed English translation of the Cantonese name, which is written up there beside the English in Chinese characters: Chit gai ji wong. "Chit Gai" means design--so far, so good. "Ji" that little Z like character, is a connective word, the written Chinese way of saying "of" or "apostrophe S". And the very last character is "Wong"--three whack wong, the character that means "Emperor" or sometimes "King". It's also a Chinese surname--as in the chanteuse Wong Fei (Faye Wong, of Chungking Express fame).
So the correct English translation of the name of this company should be "Wong Design"--if the owner is named Mr. Wong. Or if not, then: "King of Design".
I didn't run upstairs, that first time I saw the sign, because it was 9pm, and I was on my way to meet some friends at my favorite Cantonese restaurant in Hong Kong (more on that later...). Instead, I filed this errand of linguistic mercy in the back of my brain, and of course quickly forgot about it.
Until last week, as I was running to meet yet another friend at my favorite Cantonese restaurant in Hong Kong, and I passed the building again.
This time, though, I began to wonder. The sign's typeface and the style were just too smart looking and crisp to be implicated in a whopping bilingual error. Hmm. And these guys, after all, were designers.
After dinner, I dragged the friend, an expat visiting from Beijing, over to take a look, figuring that since he lives in Beijing, he would be an expert at Chinese-to-English translation bloopers. He glanced up, and immediately said: It's intentional. It's too knowing not to be.
The Internet is your friend. When I got back home I looked up the company and found this note on somebody's blog:
Hey, this is my company - thanks! I took the name because I was disillusioned with all the rhetoric I see everywhere, also because the Chinese name sounds like "wrong" ('Chit Gai Ji Wong' - 'King of Design'), and also just trying desperately not to be serious. Business is booming. Thanks for the pic - makes me feel proud in some strange way. Want a free Wrong design t-shirt?.....
Of course. What was I thinking. It took a visitor from Beijing to remind me that there is one more aspect of sign language that I forgot to discuss back there when I was deconstructing Hong Kong's marvelous public displays of inter-linguistic cleverness. And that is the hip factor. Hong Kong people have grown up with two languages always in the air (Chinese, as most of you probably know, didn't even become the "official" language of Hong Kong until 1974). Cantonese are experts at making puns, even just within Chinese. When you throw another language into the mix, and let them loose in an even bigger ocean of potential bon mots the result is a profusion of knowingly hip names and slogans.
To put it another way, language in Hong Kong has a sharp, clever big city swing to it. As a New Yorker, that is one of the first things that attracted me to Hong Kong, even before I actually set foot in the place. Just watching the HK movies, I fell for the cool. local lingo that seemed to eat up and digest and play around with English the way that Latinos in New York and Miami make delicious concoctions out of English and Spanish.
What am I talking about? Well, stuff like "Wrong Design". And this:
This is Hong Kong's coolest design/housewares store, G.O.D. It's a place where you can buy messenger bags printed with photos of old Yau Ma Tei tenement buildings, and mouse pads covered with the ad pages of old Hong Kong newspapers. Yeah, a little precious (and pricey), but it is one of the only stores in Hong Kong where you can actually purchase something that's unique to HK--and ironically referential to boot. There is nothing like G.O.D. in Shanghai or Beijing. I doubt there will be for at least another ten years. That is the difference between Hong Kong and the Mainland.
But I'm getting off my track. The reason I bring up G.O.D. is because it is an even better example of the "knowing inter-linguistic pun" genre of signs. "G.O.D." is an English homonym, a sound-alike, for some words in Cantonese. Right off the bat, this is a cool thing. Because almost always in Hong Kong, the homonyms move in the other linguistic direction, from English into Cantonese. From the "official" colonial language back into the vernacular, as a convenience for people speaking the former. So that the taxi driver can say "Ho lei woot" 菏里活, and an English person can understand it means "Hollywood Road".
G.O.D. reverses the power play--it is a homonym to help English people speak Cantonese. It is a "soundalike" for "Jyu hou di", which in Cantonese means "Live a little better". Not a bad name for a lifestyle store. And, just to make sure everyone in Hong Kong gets the joke, there are some characters in the logo to drive home the point.
There's an added treat here, for the characters contain an additional nod and wink from these very locally-focussed and hipster G.O.D. designer guys. That last character, "Di" is not a Chinese but a Cantonese character. It is one of the lexicon of "local" characters. Like messenger bags stamped with Yau Ma Tei tenement facades, it is something you will see only in Hong Kong
啲
I went to graduate school in cultural studies for some years, reading a lot of jargon-filled articles with titles like "The Subversive in Inter-Linguistic Constructions" and "National Identity in Language Usage in X..." If you live in Hong Kong, you can just skip reading these articles. You already know that language is one of Hong Kong's big creative playing fields--a free space where people let out their frustrations, make allusions, music, protest, define themselves as Hong Kong Chinese people. It is what creates life here, and why a life-long New Yorker feels at home, even when she's only getting 30 percent of the jokes.
I love living in the World's Great Cosmopolitan Chinese City, where you can be sure that when you see a mistake, it is not wong.
For those of you non-Chinese readers, a quick translation. "Wrong Design" appears to be a failed English translation of the Cantonese name, which is written up there beside the English in Chinese characters: Chit gai ji wong. "Chit Gai" means design--so far, so good. "Ji" that little Z like character, is a connective word, the written Chinese way of saying "of" or "apostrophe S". And the very last character is "Wong"--three whack wong, the character that means "Emperor" or sometimes "King". It's also a Chinese surname--as in the chanteuse Wong Fei (Faye Wong, of Chungking Express fame).
So the correct English translation of the name of this company should be "Wong Design"--if the owner is named Mr. Wong. Or if not, then: "King of Design".
I didn't run upstairs, that first time I saw the sign, because it was 9pm, and I was on my way to meet some friends at my favorite Cantonese restaurant in Hong Kong (more on that later...). Instead, I filed this errand of linguistic mercy in the back of my brain, and of course quickly forgot about it.
Until last week, as I was running to meet yet another friend at my favorite Cantonese restaurant in Hong Kong, and I passed the building again.
This time, though, I began to wonder. The sign's typeface and the style were just too smart looking and crisp to be implicated in a whopping bilingual error. Hmm. And these guys, after all, were designers.
After dinner, I dragged the friend, an expat visiting from Beijing, over to take a look, figuring that since he lives in Beijing, he would be an expert at Chinese-to-English translation bloopers. He glanced up, and immediately said: It's intentional. It's too knowing not to be.
The Internet is your friend. When I got back home I looked up the company and found this note on somebody's blog:
Hey, this is my company - thanks! I took the name because I was disillusioned with all the rhetoric I see everywhere, also because the Chinese name sounds like "wrong" ('Chit Gai Ji Wong' - 'King of Design'), and also just trying desperately not to be serious. Business is booming. Thanks for the pic - makes me feel proud in some strange way. Want a free Wrong design t-shirt?.....
Of course. What was I thinking. It took a visitor from Beijing to remind me that there is one more aspect of sign language that I forgot to discuss back there when I was deconstructing Hong Kong's marvelous public displays of inter-linguistic cleverness. And that is the hip factor. Hong Kong people have grown up with two languages always in the air (Chinese, as most of you probably know, didn't even become the "official" language of Hong Kong until 1974). Cantonese are experts at making puns, even just within Chinese. When you throw another language into the mix, and let them loose in an even bigger ocean of potential bon mots the result is a profusion of knowingly hip names and slogans.
To put it another way, language in Hong Kong has a sharp, clever big city swing to it. As a New Yorker, that is one of the first things that attracted me to Hong Kong, even before I actually set foot in the place. Just watching the HK movies, I fell for the cool. local lingo that seemed to eat up and digest and play around with English the way that Latinos in New York and Miami make delicious concoctions out of English and Spanish.
What am I talking about? Well, stuff like "Wrong Design". And this:
This is Hong Kong's coolest design/housewares store, G.O.D. It's a place where you can buy messenger bags printed with photos of old Yau Ma Tei tenement buildings, and mouse pads covered with the ad pages of old Hong Kong newspapers. Yeah, a little precious (and pricey), but it is one of the only stores in Hong Kong where you can actually purchase something that's unique to HK--and ironically referential to boot. There is nothing like G.O.D. in Shanghai or Beijing. I doubt there will be for at least another ten years. That is the difference between Hong Kong and the Mainland.
But I'm getting off my track. The reason I bring up G.O.D. is because it is an even better example of the "knowing inter-linguistic pun" genre of signs. "G.O.D." is an English homonym, a sound-alike, for some words in Cantonese. Right off the bat, this is a cool thing. Because almost always in Hong Kong, the homonyms move in the other linguistic direction, from English into Cantonese. From the "official" colonial language back into the vernacular, as a convenience for people speaking the former. So that the taxi driver can say "Ho lei woot" 菏里活, and an English person can understand it means "Hollywood Road".
G.O.D. reverses the power play--it is a homonym to help English people speak Cantonese. It is a "soundalike" for "Jyu hou di", which in Cantonese means "Live a little better". Not a bad name for a lifestyle store. And, just to make sure everyone in Hong Kong gets the joke, there are some characters in the logo to drive home the point.
There's an added treat here, for the characters contain an additional nod and wink from these very locally-focussed and hipster G.O.D. designer guys. That last character, "Di" is not a Chinese but a Cantonese character. It is one of the lexicon of "local" characters. Like messenger bags stamped with Yau Ma Tei tenement facades, it is something you will see only in Hong Kong
啲
I went to graduate school in cultural studies for some years, reading a lot of jargon-filled articles with titles like "The Subversive in Inter-Linguistic Constructions" and "National Identity in Language Usage in X..." If you live in Hong Kong, you can just skip reading these articles. You already know that language is one of Hong Kong's big creative playing fields--a free space where people let out their frustrations, make allusions, music, protest, define themselves as Hong Kong Chinese people. It is what creates life here, and why a life-long New Yorker feels at home, even when she's only getting 30 percent of the jokes.
I love living in the World's Great Cosmopolitan Chinese City, where you can be sure that when you see a mistake, it is not wong.
I am guessing you did go up and tell me (or there will be no story, haha). And I suspect they did it deliberately to draw attention.
By the way, I cheated a bit and Google them. The list of clients they said they have and the English they used was just too good to be a simple mistake. This remind me of a old TV drama where one of the episode had a restaurant showing a big sign with some words written incorrectly to draw customers into the store. May be they had the same idea here.
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here is the self description from their aboutus:
www.wrongdesign.com/aboutus.htm
We use the name "Wrong" to imply an unconventional business and design approach to our work, and also to differentiate ourselves from the multitude of self-glorifying companies who rely more on sales and presentation than product and results. Also, the name reflects the pronunciation of our Chinese name "the King of Design".
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This from their About Us page:
We use the name "Wrong" to imply an unconventional business and design approach to our work, and also to differentiate ourselves from the multitude of self-glorifying companies who rely more on sales and presentation than product and results. Also, the name reflects the pronunciation of our Chinese name "the King of Design".
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Sharp eyes, both of you.
I must give credit to Roland (eswn), above for spotting it first, and being so kind as to let me hold back his comment until I found the time this week to finish writing this article.
No writer wants to give away her punchline before she delivers the joke!
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I heard that GOD's latest slogan, "Delay no more"
is a hilarious pun for Cantonese speakers.
Can anyone clue me in on the joke?
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I haven't seen the actual ad, so I might be wrong at this...
... But when I was a kid, "delay no more" was understood to be a pun for "dil nei lo mo". Or, "(I want to) know your mother -- in the biblical sense".
This slogan might well be hilarious and market-wise in some context, but I would likely find it rather rude and off-putting (i.e., "you really expect me to buy your products after this?") But then some "experts" on Cantonese slangs, including the late James Wong, have suggested that this insult has a triad root such that the "lo mo (老母)" in question actually refers to one's mob capo. So maybe those of us without any underworld connection needn't take offense at it after all.
This whole business of playing on words in Hong Kong has gone way too far. They are running out of truly meaningful and witty puns. Someone please put a stop to this without further ado.
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Hi, this is Dominic from Wrong design. Thanks for your blog entry and all the interesting comments. When I look out my window I sometimes see people taking photos of my sign, it's pretty amusing and somehow flattering. I think you summed it up better than I have. Some clients love it and some can't get their heads around the name, but we've been around for so long I think most people we work with don't notice it anymore. To clarify, I'm British, schooled in New York and have very clumsy knowledge of Cantonese. The Chinese and English names both came about at the same time and had a funny kind of correspondence. Everything seemed to fit and had an appropriate meaning so I went with it. I made a 2nd sign to go on the side of the building but the management company wouldn't let me put it up.
Great entry on G.O.D. also. The initials stand for "Goods of Desire" but I always guessed this is incidental and they came up with it after they chose "GOD". They really are clever at highlighting local elements, like the blue, red and white canvas bags everyone uses.
re the "Delay no more" mentioned above - I never thought about that before but if you use your imagination it does sound partly like the common Cantonese slang "Diu lei lo mo" which is pretty much translated above. I'm not sure if a company as big and slick as this would have sanctioned this during the design-brief, but if they did I think it's pretty cool.
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Hi! Thanks for writing in. Sorry to be so late in responding..I have been on the road. How did you come up with the "Wrong"--was it a collaboration with one of your Chinese speaking associates, or do you write Chinese? Finally, can I get a T-Shirt too?
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Hello dm,
Great to hear from you. I think I am having withdrawal syndrome due to severe lack of Learning Cantonese blog entries by you. Any chance you have a few entries in your pockets already?
Hope your trip was good.
Cheers,
Kempton
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Coming right up, Kempton...just for you. Your favorite topic too, I think.
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Hi there. Sorry, I'm late too! For the name, I guessed it in Cantonese and someone helped me write it correctly. I still can't pronounce it very well though (usually sounds like I am the King of Cutting Chicken). Sure, if anyone wants a t-shirt please email the wrongdesign address with your contact details and i'll send you one. They are small though (the largest is probably a medium in western sizes).
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