沒學好英語的後果?馬拉松賽事參賽者把"香皂”當"甜點"

Runners in a marathon were left with a bad taste in their Mouths when they mistook free bars of soap for energy bars in an incident that's been put down to the language barrier.

馬拉松參賽者把免費發的香皂當成了能量棒，一口咬下滿嘴“酸爽”，而造成此次事件的原因被歸咎爲語言障礙。

Some 20,000 runners at the Qingyuan marathon in south China's Guangdong province received a gift pack shortly after they crossed the finishing line, the People's Daily newspaper reports. Hoping to bite into what they thought was an energy bar, athletes instead got a mouthful of what turned out to be fruit-perfumed moisturising soap. Witnesses report many bars of soap, all with one bite missing, dumped at the roadside, and the problem appears to come from the fact that the soap packaging was written in English, which many runners did not understand, the paper's Chinese-language report noted.

據《人民日報》報道，在中國南部廣東省清遠市舉辦的馬拉松比賽中，約有2萬名參賽者在到達終點後收到一個禮包。他們以爲是能量棒，一口咬下，結果嘴裏全是水果香皂的味道。據目擊者稱，路邊有很多被扔掉的香皂塊，都被咬了一口。《人民日報》的中文報道稱，這一問題似乎是因爲香皂的包裝紙上寫的是英文，很多參賽者看不懂。

The organisers of the race were quick to apologise. "The packs of soap were indeed like food packaging. It is a negligent mistake on our part," an official told Yangtse Evening Post. There was also some concern over the level of injuries at the event, with 12,200 runners needing medical treatment or assistance during and after the race. It's not clear how many were the result of the soap incident.

賽事組織者很快就此次事件進行了道歉。一位官員對《揚子晚報》說：“這些香皂的包裝確實很像食物包裝。這是我們的疏忽。”引人關注的還有此次賽事中的傷者，12200名參賽者在賽中和賽後需要醫療救治或救助。還不清楚有多少人是因爲誤食香皂而受傷。

Chinese social media users piled in to mock those who had taken a bite out of their "energy bars". One Weibo user urged the organisers to contact the Guinness Book of Records: "More than 10,000 people together eat soap. China is a land full of wonders". Another asked: "Why give them a bar of soap, to take a shower at the halfway point?" However, some made the point that the language barrier shouldn't have been a problem. "Your life isn't good if your English isn't good", one Weibo user said philosophically.

中國的社交媒體用戶一擁而上，嘲笑那些咬了“能量棒”的人。一個微博用戶慫恿組織者去聯繫世界吉尼斯紀錄：“一萬多人聚在一起吃香皂，中國真是一片神奇的土地。”另一個人則問：“爲什麼要給他們一塊香皂？是要讓他們在半道上洗澡嗎？”然而，還有一些人認爲，語言障礙不應該成爲問題。一個微博用戶說得很有哲理，“如果你英語不好，生活也不會好到哪裏去”。