没学好英语的后果？马拉松赛事“香皂”当“甜点”

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.

马拉松参赛者把免费发的香皂当成了能量棒，一口咬下满嘴“酸爽”，而造成此次事件的原因被归咎为语言障碍。

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.

据《人民日报》报道，在中国南部广东省清远市举办的马拉松比赛中，约有2万名参赛者在到达终点后收到一个礼包。他们以为是能量棒，一口咬下，结果嘴里全是水果香皂的味道。据目击者称，路边有很多被扔掉的香皂块，都被咬了一口。《人民日报》的中文报道称，这一问题似乎是因为香皂的包装纸上写的是英文，很多参赛者看不懂。

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.

赛事组织者很快就此次事件进行了道歉。一位官员对《扬子晚报》说：“这些香皂的包装确实很像食物包装。这是我们的疏忽。”引人关注的还有此次赛事中的伤者，12200名参赛者在赛中和赛后需要医疗救治或救助。还不清楚有多少人是因为误食香皂而受伤。

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.

中国的社交媒体用户一拥而上，嘲笑那些咬了“能量棒”的人。一个微博用户怂恿组织者去联系世界吉尼斯纪录：“一万多人聚在一起吃香皂，中国真是一片神奇的土地。”另一个人则问：“为什么要给他们一块香皂？是要让他们在半道上洗澡吗？”然而，还有一些人认为，语言障碍不应该成为问题。一个微博用户说得很有哲理，“如果你英语不好，生活也不会好到哪里去”。