Five sliced food and pee soup will be off the menu under a plan to try to standardize the English names of dishes and drinks sold in Beijing restaurants before the 2008 Olympics.
Misspelt food like complicated cake, pee soup, five sliced things, and dumplings stuffed with ovary, digestive glands of a crab and crab in the glass, the carp literally getting translated as crap, are being banished from the city at eating places.
It’s not only the restaurants where the English language is being slaughtered due to funny translation and spellings, but the road signs too.
Examples abound in shopping complexes and malls with signboards displaying ‘fuck the certain price goods’.
At many places the English translation for the China linguistic word ‘entrance’ becomes ‘Enter the mouth”.
To avoid the red faces in the Olympics 2008, Chinese government is eager to set up a major drive to standardize use of English in public, called the ‘Beijing speaks to the world committee’, which scours the capital seeking out menus or road signs lost in mistranslation. It has translated more than 1,000 dishes and drinks so far. ‘We welcome public participation and suggestions,’ The committee told the Beijing Daily.
More people are learning English in China, and the standard has improved in recent years.
Via: The independent
