26
Mar 2011More Machine Translation Menu Fun
OK, I know, it’s been done before, and it’s just so easy. There are many menus in China with bad (and often hilarious) English translations. But even after all these years, this one stood out to me because (1) it is otherwise an extremely high quality menu, and (2) the errors are of a somewhat bizarre nature, rather than centering on horribly inappropriate mistranslations of the character 干 [more on that here and here].
Anyway, here are some samples (apologies for the quality!):
Where pathology and cuisine meet:
Halogen? (Another meaning of 卤)
A bunch of them have really weird endings (I think the machine translated names have been truncated):
This last one is my favorite, because it comes across almost poetic:
> taken meat
dishes broken
string beans
Indeed.
You can find more of the menu here.
Update:
In case you’re interested, the restaurant is called 炖品世家, or “Aristocratic Family of Soup.” (Oh yes, this is clearly a restaurant that has some fun with the English language!) The restaurant is in Shanghai, near the intersection of Kangding Road and Wanhangdu Road (康定路、万航渡路). A photo:
Also, a big thanks to Will, who introduced this resturant to me and provide the above photo and address.