Incomprehensible Mandarin

I came across an interesting article from Lianhe Zaobao, 31 August. It was on Page 25, if you wanna know. Anyway, you can read the article below or click here.

看不懂的华文

我住勿洛蓄水池一带。最近，这里的住户都收到了附近一所中学发出的传单，通知住户要在某月某日上门收集旧衣物作为慈善用途。我看了传单的中文，简直不敢相信这是学校发出的。华文显然是根据英文翻译的，但却译得一塌糊涂，让人看了摸不着头脑。显然的，文字完全没有经过适当的校阅，翻译者也完全不负责任，以致贻笑大方。以下就是传单的原文：

　　“亲爱的居民，

　　作为我们的学校的CIP节目一部分，我们在我们的老报纸和衣物的汇集寻求您的帮助培养资金为是我们的被采取的慈善在2007年的MDAS（新加坡肌肉萎缩症协会）。在星期四汇集8月30日将发生在2和5pm之间。

　　如果您可能留下您的老报纸和衣物在您的门阶在那天促进我们的汇集，我们会感激。不要使用镇议会提供的黄色塑料袋。简单的塑料袋就足够了。您的贡献被赞赏。谢谢！”

If you are not too lousy in Chinese, it should be quite obvious to you that they used either a lousy online translator or a lousy human translator.

If you were to translate the Mandarin version to English, you should get the correct English meaning which should be something like:

“Dear residents,
As part of our school’s CIP Programme to raise funds for MDAS (Muscular Dystrophy Association Singapore), we seek your help in our collection of old newspapers and clothes. The collection will happen on Thursday, 30 August, between 2 to 5 pm.

In order to facilitate our collection, we will appreciate if you could leave your old newspapers and clothes at your door on that day. Please do not use the yellow plastic bags provided by the town councils. The simple? ordinary? common? plastic bags will be enough. Your contribution will be greatly appreciated. Thank you!”