Bad restaurant translations

[Jenise]

Ethnic restaurant dishes don't always translate well into English!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbKsR-Nq8KU

So hard to choose, but I'll have the Whatever.

Graham Norton is a hoot. And those are particularly bad translations. More often, it's just puzzling or incoherent.

The Sichuan cooking style "yu xiang" gets a lot of mangled translations. According to Fuchsia Dunlop, the literal translation is "fish-fragrant" and that is the translation she uses. I've usually seen it on restaurant menus as "with fish flavor". Apparently there are a lot of other translations like that. Yu xiang dishes of course do not contain, taste like, or smell of fish. Apparently the name comes about because the combination of aromatics used in the stir-fry are adopted from those customarily used to prepare fish.

The translation problem probably works in the other direction, too. Oddly named dishes such as "sloppy Joe", "hoppin' John", or "bubble and squeak" probably yield some hilarious translations.

-Paul W.

[Robin Garr]

I hold in fond memory a little mom'n'pop Thai place that offered patrons the opportunity to taste ...
crap rangoon!

I've been known to take great delight in mispronouncing French. Our family was in a restaurant in Bermuda where the main titles of the dishes were in French with English subtitles in smaller print. One of the items was "poisson des roches" (Bermuda rockfish). I pronounced that "poison des roaches".

-Paul W.

The best part of that film clip was seeing Stanley Tucci have a case of the hysterics <3

The wit and raconteur Gerard Hoffnung compiled a list of bad translations allegedly appearing on menus and pamphlets from restaurants and hotels in Europe. A couple of my favorites:

"all water in this restaurant was personally passed by the proprietor"

"our motto is 'ever serve you right'"

-Paul W.