It’s been cars, cars, cars in recent posts and this is no exception. I now present MINI‘s latest advertising campaign in China that is based on the recent world record achievement of cramming 25 people in a MINI:
The campaign slogan is, ‘一个神话中的装人, 一装人中的神话’ (Yīgè shénhuà zhōng de zhuāng rén, Yī zhuāng rén zhōng de shénhuà) which is very roughly translates to ‘The myth of loading people, is loaded with myth‘ and also makes a nice little Chinese tongue twister. MINI’s recent world car cramming record is currently being promoted on MINI’s Chinese homepage.
Car cramming itself is actually quite a serious competition. The new record was set by employees at the Beijing YanBao Auto on the 25th May 2010. They managed to fit a staggering 25 people into a MINI – (smashing the previous record of 24 set in 2009 by New Zealand based All-Star cheerleaders)!
Here are some photos from the 2010 world record win:
Credit to: Interone (Beijing Branch)
“The campaign slogan is, ‘一个神话中的装人, 一装人中的神话’ (Yīgè shénhuà zhōng de zhuāng rén, Yī zhuāng rén zhōng de shénhuà) which is very roughly translates to ‘The myth of loading people, is loaded with myth‘ and also makes a nice little Chinese tongue twister. MINI”
The parallel structure in the slogan is “a ___ among ___, a ____ among ____”. In this case 装人 zhuāng rén, something into which people can be loaded, which I’ll gloss as “people-carrier”. If we also use “legend” instead of myth (the more exact translation) for 神话, we get:
“A people-carrier of legends, a legend among people-carriers” referring to the horse and the vehicle, respectively.
Hi Kaiwen,
Thank you kindly for addressing my poor translation. I am really just a beginner in Chinese Mandarin so it’s great to get feedback.
Please do check out http://advertising.chinasmack.com/
The above is my new site.
Warm regards,
Daniel