Posted on 04/21/2012 6:17:31 AM PDT by Ready4Freddy
BEIJING – Overseas tourists often find the menus here befuddling, for good reason.
After all, what Westerner has experience with foods like these? “Cowboy leg,” “Hand-shredded ass meat,” “Red-burned lion head,” “Strange flavor noodles,” “Blow-up flatfish with no result,” or “Tofu made by woman with freckles.”
As proud as the Chinese people are of their thousands of years of gastronomic culture, even a Chinese native can feel disoriented when going to another province, given all the different styles of cooking. Many of the food names, often unique to different provinces, get lost in translation, especially in booming cities starting to embrace overseas tourists.
With few English speakers, restaurants usually translate their menus word by word directly from an English-Chinese dictionary. Or they just Google the Chinese characters. A photo that made the rounds online a few years ago got a chuckle from a lot of people: a restaurant with a large “page not found” sign above its door as its English name.
(Excerpt) Read more at behindthewall.msnbc.msn.com ...
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They got the menus mixed up. That’s the menu from the bath house in San Francisco.
“What exactly is ‘Hand Shredded A$$ Meat’?”
Do you REALLY want to know?
Barney Frank wants to know.
The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak" became "The ghost is agreeable, but the meat is soft," and,
"Out of sight, out of mind" became "invisible maniac."
I dunno...the notion of a non-boneless version is ....?
Just go to www.engrish.com for plenty more.
Adults who are not offended by naughty words can select the “Adult” category for some funny stuff. Bear in mind that in most cases either they don’t understand the meaning of the word, or are applying a secondary meaning of some translated English four-letter words.
“Boneless Pork Rectums”
Imagine that! Several cases full of frozen LIBERALS! ;)
Very popular in San Francisco.
better inverted than prolapsed I guess.....
Barney should go ask Larry Sinclair.Larry knows.
It could be like stumpwhipped chitlins.
Chickety China the Chinese Chicken!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TApoPLBRYQw
Years ago I worked in Venezuela and ate out all the time. At one very nice restaurant the waiter suggested “Gordon Blub”. We went with something else. Turned out he was suggesting Chicken Cordon Bleu.
If the label said "Spineless", I'd swear there were Republicans inside.
Just peruse through a few threads here at FR and you'll see adults post messages at a 9 yr. old reading level. The misspelled words and punctuation errors are legion.
No Photoshop, sorry:
http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=2926
http://www.forumosa.com/taiwan/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=65388
>>>“What exactly is ‘Hand Shredded A$$ Meat’?”
pulled pork butt.
I doubt the Chinese language is clumsy to the Chinese. : ),
English has its origins in the old Western Germanic language and then saw an influx of Old Norse words with the Viking invasions and subsequent settlements. The Norman invasion in 1066 had its influences that can still hear today in the modern English vocabulary.
During the Renaissance, Latin and Ancient Greek supplanted Norman and French as the main source of new words. As result English developed into very much a "borrowing" language with an enormously disparate vocabulary. Of course we in America have added even more words to our vocabulary borrowed from the various immigrant groups over the years; Italians, Eastern Europeans, Latinos, etc.
Modern English is a very rich and dynamic language but that is also what makes it difficult to learn, speak and write correctly and also what makes it difficult to translate from other languages.
I’m not a linguist nor do I know a lot about the Chinese language but as I understand, the Chinese language, while it has many dialects, has not changed much over time and does not have near as many words in common usage or as many words with similar but not quite the same meaning or words that sound the same but have completely different meanings as does English. And that makes for some very unintentionally humorous translations.
It’s likely donkey meat. Donkey is pretty common in some regions.
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