Beijing asks citizens to help clean up street signs

Beijing Municipal Foreign Affairs Office has asked for the help of local residents to help fix any grammatical English errors they find on street signs around the city. If you have a keen eye for detail and love English grammar then this is the perfect opportunity to help out!

The aptly named exercise, the '2018 Online Correction of Erroneous Public Sign Translations' was launched recently on March 27.

It's thought the push comes to tidy up the city's street and road signs before the next Winter Olympics in 2022. Beijing has been named the hosting city of the 2022 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, and as such, the city will receive huge media attention across the world. During this time, Beijing will see an even higher amount of tourism from all over the world as it holds the opening and closing ceremonies, so signs must be legible and correct.

Although a funny sight for those that have a good grasp of English grammar, some of the signs around Beijing are incorrectly worded and some are even rude, so now is the perfect time to get everything in shape. Due to the sheer size of Beijing, it's obvious that this isn't a one man job.

So, to encourage people to get involved, the Foreign Affairs Office has included monthly prizes for those that find the most signs to be altered. If you come across a sign that could do with a little updating, simply fill in the form here. Your application will then be sent over to a team of grammar experts and if your version is correct, you could win a prize!

To make things easier, Qianlong Net, one of the city's online newspapers, has published this helpful guide for you to reference .

Here are our favorite sign mistakes from around China and what they should say in English. Do you recognize any from Beijing? Let us know!