Things are looking up in Zilina economically thanks to the new Kia factory. We have all sorts of foreign managers coming here to work or just take a look and they need new hotels, new restaurants and so on. The process of adapting to the new needs is still at quite an interesting stage. For example, writing an English menu is still a skill that most places are just learning, as the picture to the right shows. It reads more like a witch's potion recipe than an enticing advert:
- scampi salad
- crab nipper
- frog-thigh
- cuttle-fish
- shark steak
- little octopus
- dish two-man
I think the last one is my favourite
14 komentárov:
And the 'menu' is where on your page ?
Thanks for the warning. There should be a photograph next to the text (do you see a little square there?) but it's showing that little square instead. I shall investigage. Please bear with me.
OK, it should be fixed now. I originally tried to send the post from in the Picassa picture organizing program and it screwed up the link (did not in fact upload the picture to the server).
I hope it was worth the wait.
This is funny. I always wish, when it's too late, of course, that I had taken pictures of some of the more comical descriptions on menus, especially in the Baltic countries. One of my favorites in Riga is *rice with green pins.* I also used to think tit bits was funny, thinking it was a misspelling of tidbits, then someone told me that tidbit is American and titbit is British -- is that right? A very expensive, classy restaurant right across the street from the Presidential Palace in Warsaw, offered *stout on top* when I was there a week or so ago. Turned out to be Guinness on tap, although drinking enough of it could make one stout on top.
Little octopus is squid? Two man?
Ed
See even alledged Trolls have there uses on stopping errors ;-)))
I’ve travelled to Hong Kong for 15 years and this is TYPICAL, though I must admit it’s a classic example.
If you read Chinese you can see exactly how each of the errors was made.
They’re all perfectly logical, even if the result is unintentionally hilarious.
On an old menu I have from HK , “Benumbed hot vegetables fries fuck silk.” It should read “Hot and spicy garlic greens stir-fried with shredded dried tofu.” However, the mangled version above is not as mangled as it seems: it’s a literal word-by-word translation, with some cases where the translator chose the wrong one of two meanings of a word:
First two characters: “ma la” meaning hot and spicy, but literally “numbingly spicy” — it means a kind of Sichuan spice that mixes chilies with Sichuan peppercorn or prickly ash. The latter tends to numb the mouth. “numbed hot” is a decent, if ungrammatical, literal translation.
Next two: “jiu cai,” the top greens of a fragrant garlic. There’s no good English translation, so “vegetables” is just fine.
Next one: “chao,” meaning stir-fried, quite reasonably rendered as “fries” (should be “fried,” ).
Finally: “gan si” meaning shredded dried tofu, but literally translated as “dry silk.” The problem here is that the word “gan” means both “to dry” and “to do,” and the latter meaning has come to mean “to fuck.” Unfortunately, the recent proliferation of common English dictionaries in China means people choose the vulgar translation way too often, on the grounds that it’s colloquial.
Last December, I was in a modern supermarket in HK whose dried-foods aisle was helpfully labeled “Assorted Fuck.” The word “si” meaning “silk floss” is used in cooking to refer to anything that’s been julienned — very thin pommes frites are sold as “potato silk,” for instance. The fact that it’s tofu is just understood (sheets of dried tofu shredded strips ) — if it were dried anything else it would say so.
Still at the risk of becoming a boring Burik , I bow now out ...
W Jew
PS ..Your posting entry word-verfi ..was FCK VOD ..;-)))
Yes, I read the same thing from a blog post by Jon Rahoi, an American living in Hong Kong, although I didn't notice that Mr. Jew bothered to mention that he "borrowed" it from him. It offers lots of hilarious menu language disaters. Plagiarism does save a lot of effort, though, if you don't mind stealing words and ideas from other people.
AW
My god I miss my daily road show on the TSS. Whatever happened to Oscar Netherlander did he die, does any one know or just finally bore himself to death.
Did anyone send flowers ?
Amazing , it does not take much fish bait to catch the sad moron trolls.
Teaching English at skk 200 an hour and Googling as way of mental challenge when set a short puzzle, must be really expand the very simple American mind.
I must remember never to do it, just in case I get a 10,000 percent drop in my daily income ;-))
W Jew ..
Teachers have an easy time catching cheaters, especially the really obvious ones. And Pom, you are the most obvious cheater I've ever seen, no matter who you are claiming to be this hour. Still full of yourself, I see. I'm starting to discover your entertainment value. Your new Miro character is starting slow, but we know you'll step up and be your true idiot self any day.
mmmm dear Alex try again and again and again and again .
Sadly you're not bright enough to know when your being suckered in, so not much of a challenge really ..Neither was the rock climbing author, the menopausal witch and papa smurf.
But please carry on looking a the nerd , it must suit you .
XXX
W Jew
What's really funny in a sick kind of way, Pom, is that every time you are caught lying, plagiarizing, pretending you are 50 different people, you come up with the same lame little excuse. Hey, I was just trying to lure all you suckers into believing me. It has never worked, so why do you keep doing it? I bet you do it because you are truly a sick person and really don't know that you're so bloody obvious.
I'll leave the late hours to your stomach meds and anxieties, I'd rather sleep.
How can anyone write so much and say so little of interest .......
My thanks to Lance Bryce, who pointed me to this inteersting Blog, which I have spent the morning reading ( along with exchanging crap with Alex W and James at Slovensko.com ).
Whilst Roger , I admire your ethics of not promoting your own Blog on another website , I am not sure why you bothered in my case. Normal rules on Slovensko seem to only matter to those that have bought a place at the spittoon . I see you are not a lover of Slovensko.comA ( nice one ) and so I must wonder why you bother to make such efforts to keep some thread order, as the place is full of dick head American’s claiming their ‘right’, to just pee on anyone who may disagree with their insular view of life, outside the Stars & Strips or their tunnel vision .
I note with interest Alex W , posts on this forum and is still full of the hate and bile here, as he is on Slovensko.com . Lets face it , guy from Tennessee , six million population , poor wages , where 85% are whitie , 15% mixed ethnic races, full of I voted for Redneck Bush twice, forests-backwoodsmen ( no wonder the film Deliverance was based in the next State ) and only well known person of any note to come from the area , was Davy Crocket .
No wonder Alex W says he feels so at home in Slovakia ….other than the language, he is home ;-))
Hope you don’t mind if I pop in from time to time and stamp my feet with you ?
Miro R
How can anyone write so much and have so little of interest to say? (and under so many different nicks)
Wow Roger a talking American turd, I guess you better flush him away, before he shoots someone delivering democracy.
I saw an SNS road show yesterday, singing Sloavk rha-rah songs up on Devin castle ..What is that all about then , do you know ( as SNS is based in Zilina ) ? A dozen policemen patrolling about fifty flag waving people, mostly over 60 years of age. Some could hardly walk. Is this the typical SMS voter profile ..?
W Jew
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