A bad English-language translation on at least one bus in Chengdu, capital of Southwest China's Sichuan province, has drawn mockery from Internet users.

A Chengdu resident posted a picture online on Monday showing a sign on a No 300 bus - which connects a railway station and Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport - that translates the Chinese word for "terminal" into "hou machine building".

Internet users mocked the translation for its combination of English and pinyin.

Pinyin is a system to transcribe Chinese characters into Latin script. It is used to teach Chinese and to spell Chinese names in foreign publications.

In Chinese, the word "terminal" comprises three characters with the corresponding Pinyin scripts "hou", "ji" and "lou." The Chinese characters pronounced "ji" and lou" by themselves mean "machine" and "building."

A manager with a local public transportation company was quoted as saying by newssc.org, a local government-run website, that the city has 20 No 300 buses, but it is not known how many buses have the translation mistake.

The manager blamed the mistake on an advertising firm and promised to correct it within two days.