Signology: New Bilingual signs for Beijing's Buses

Beijing's buses are in the process of being decked out with new bilingual signs that will make it easier for the hordes of foreign tourists who'll be flowing into the city during the Olympics to make use of the city's public transport system. A good idea given that BOCOG recently announced that they're not planning offer any parking spaces for private vehicles at Olympic venues during the games, it seems that most people are going to have to rely on the public transport to get to events. The Beijing Public Transport authority revealed that by mid-May 90% of the city's fleet of more than 20,000 buses will feature the new signs. Buses along some of the city’s more central bus routes (lines 1, 4, and 120) have already had the new signs installed and I'm happy to report that they're both Chinglish-free and useful. The signs range from those informing passengers from which door to enter and exit the bus to which fare system applies on that route. Most importantly, pinyin of all the bus stops along the route has also been included. Buses with electronic display panels have also started including announcements of the next stop in pinyin.

In other signage news, as stores across the city undergo, street by street, what appears to be a government-backed makeover of all their signs, 8 districts of Beijing have agreed to use a new standardized public toilet sign. The sign contains one flawless English word: Toilet.

While doing a little bit of background research for this post, I dug up a few examples of funny signs from the lengthy that's Beijing Chinglish archive and offer up this list of the top ten eight Chinglish signs that we've come across:

1. Racist Park (Ethnic Park)
2. Stewed Big Cock (Dun Da Gongji)
3. Hot Spicy Crap (Hot Spicy Carp)
4. Dongda Anus Hospital
5. The Wonderful Boning Park(billboard)
6. Some hilariously funny mistranslations of the Chinese character gan
7. China Daily's headline: Beijing getting rid of badly translate signs
8. This unfortunate sign at a hospital

I also came across these two great sites for fans of Chinese signs and Pinyin: Signese.com is a collection of photos of Chinese characters in action and Pinyin News: keeps tabs on all things pinyin

Links and Sources
The First: 双语站名贴进公交车厢 万辆公交车统一标志 (image)
The First: 城八区将设公厕指向标志
Pinyin News: Beijing subway signage — some photos
Winding Road: No Parking at the Olympic Stadiums in Beijing
Signese

From the Vault
City Scene: The Good, The Bad and the Chinglish (Jan 2003)
City Scene: Chinglish Busters (Dec 2003)
City Scene: Another Helping of Stewed Big Cock? Yes Please (Mar 2007)
City Scene: Scenester (Oct 2007)
Danwei: Beijing cleans up its sign translations
Language Log: The Etiology and Elaboration of a Flagrant Mistranslation (a great analysis of how the Chinese character Gan came to be mis-translated)
The Vortext: Goodbye, Anus Hospital
Xinhua: Beijing to unify toilet direction plates ahead of Olympics