I'm broken, in the best possible way.
6/4/07 03:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
minervasoloI am sitting in my room, alone in the house, laughing so hard I hurt. I was getting scared that I wouldn't be able to stop: I just kept scrolling down.
The problem with translating a menu when you don't speak English
Normally, Engrish just gives me a bit of a grin, and a faint sense of guilt for taking the piss (god knows I'd do no better). Most of the mistakes are normally fairly obvious, and really, it's only a few items. However, i think I would have struggled to order anything from this menu. 'Cowboy leg' anyone? How about some 'Fragrant spring onion sauce explodescow son'? Or 'red date silk tube-shaped container steams frog'? Oh, and the ever popular 'Benumbed hot vegetables fries fuck silk'.
I want to know what dictionary they used. I've seen 'untethered chicken' and 'stened tomatoes' in a Brazilian restaraunt, and you can kind of see how they got there (though I still can't work out what 'golf pod sauce' is), and, okay, 'cowboy' is probably 'veal', but what the hell are you trying to translate that comes out as 'fuck'? Or 'explodescow'?
ETA There's a lot of debate in the comments as to whether it's faked (not improbable) and whether it's racist. Despite my above comment, I don't see having a laugh at something like this as particularly racist: I absolutely expect people in China to get a good laugh out of something terribly translated into Mandarin or Cantonese. It's not the languages, or the countries/cultures, that are funny here; it's the simply act of literal translation. I mean, can you imagine 'spotted dick' translated into Mandarin? What the hell would they think they were about to order? (actually, there's a good exmaple here: lots of silly people getting Chinese and Japense character tattoos without being completely sure what thery're gettnig. I especially like "stop woman flow", which seems to imply some sort of sanitary product)
The problem with translating a menu when you don't speak English
Normally, Engrish just gives me a bit of a grin, and a faint sense of guilt for taking the piss (god knows I'd do no better). Most of the mistakes are normally fairly obvious, and really, it's only a few items. However, i think I would have struggled to order anything from this menu. 'Cowboy leg' anyone? How about some 'Fragrant spring onion sauce explodescow son'? Or 'red date silk tube-shaped container steams frog'? Oh, and the ever popular 'Benumbed hot vegetables fries fuck silk'.
I want to know what dictionary they used. I've seen 'untethered chicken' and 'stened tomatoes' in a Brazilian restaraunt, and you can kind of see how they got there (though I still can't work out what 'golf pod sauce' is), and, okay, 'cowboy' is probably 'veal', but what the hell are you trying to translate that comes out as 'fuck'? Or 'explodescow'?
ETA There's a lot of debate in the comments as to whether it's faked (not improbable) and whether it's racist. Despite my above comment, I don't see having a laugh at something like this as particularly racist: I absolutely expect people in China to get a good laugh out of something terribly translated into Mandarin or Cantonese. It's not the languages, or the countries/cultures, that are funny here; it's the simply act of literal translation. I mean, can you imagine 'spotted dick' translated into Mandarin? What the hell would they think they were about to order? (actually, there's a good exmaple here: lots of silly people getting Chinese and Japense character tattoos without being completely sure what thery're gettnig. I especially like "stop woman flow", which seems to imply some sort of sanitary product)
no subject
Date: 8/4/07 07:15 pm (UTC)