The Telegraph reports that Chinese businesses have gone nuts over President-Elect Barack Obama and that businesses are registering to use his name as a trademark on everything from instant noodles to children’s clothes, to coffee and even wooden logs.
None of the applications has so far been approved, and the likelihood of success is slim: all politician’s names are censored in China. To get around the block, some companies are already producing clothes marked “Aobama”, which is phonetically similar in Chinese.
I’m looking forward to some fun “Aobama” stuff on Engrish.com in the coming years.
Incidentally the 3 characters for Obama in Chinese* is: 歐巴馬 (or sometimes 奧巴馬)
The 3 characters for Barack in Chinese is: 巴拉克
And “Yes, we can” is translated to: 是的，我們能做到.
*I try to use the traditional characters whenever possible. I hate the simplified characters.
About jozjozjoz
jozjozjoz is a taiwanese-american gal who lives and blogs underneath the hollywood sign and who doesn’t clean her fishtank unless the fish starts to do the backstroke. she is also able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, but cannot stop from bumping into door handles, cabinet doors, and anything else that protrudes or has a sharp edge. she does not run with scissors for this same reason. she can pet the fur off a dog but don’t ask her to go anywhere near a horse. or a moth. or a roach. her dealings with L.A.’s finest (aka the parking violations department) are legend, as are her giant sneezes.
Other than the two too many joz’s, jozjozjoz is a perfectly normal, relatively sane individual who defies the odds, reaches for the stars, and carries moonbeams home in a jar. She’d rather be a fish… but not in her own dirty fishtank.
http://www.jozjozjoz.com
