Pretty wacky skimping on hiring translators at the fried intestine company. Which is in Taiwan apparently, traditional characters and (New Taiwan) $ price. ‘Signature deep fried large intestine’. ‘炸’ can mean ‘explode’ as in 爆炸 ‘explosion’, but also oil fry as in ‘酥炸’ (deep) fried.
A Japanese place I used to eat had something on the menu translated as “Steam Thing”.
Or, it could just be a warning. Perhaps the first couple of logographs translate something akin to, “Make sure toilet is working before eating.”
Stranger
For a long time, the Russian market near me had a big sign in the freezer section “Curd Cheese Bars”. When I finally opened the doors and picked one up, it became apparent they meant “Individually Wrapped Chocolate Coated Cheesecake Bites”. They were cheap, delicious and there were many brands and varieties. I miss that store.
My personal favorirte bad English on menus in foreign countries is when crap is misspelled as crap. Thank you, no.
52 bucks for an exploded colon? I guess it’s one of those “we only have to sell one” things.
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Hey, I just discovered that when you want to reply with just an elipsis it is too short for idiot Discourse to allow it (known) and that it would trim it to two dots (known) but if you reply with five dots it will let you and trim off two dots for the proper three. Neat.
$1.59 after the conversion. Cheap colon blow at that price!
Dammit. That should be:
My personal favorite bad English on menus in foreign countries is when crab is misspelled as crap.
Huh. My guess was carp.
This was at a local supermarket. I think it was some kind of grain beverage.
A Polish grocery sometimes has Eegs with Traut, like an amazing boiled egg salad with smoked salmon/trout & scallion except it’s eegs and traut.
My most absurd recollection was in the Plaça Reial in Barcelona, in the corner in the map where you see Roma Reial - Mediterranean Restaurant today. I forgot what the restaurant was called in the mid `90s, but they translated all the dishes with beans (green beans, backed beans…) with jewish women in English and Jüdinnen in German. Green Jewish Women, Baked Jewish Women… Jüdinnen grün, gebackene Jüdinnen… I know why they made this mistake: judías in Spanish means both beans and female jewish person, but still. What I did not understand is why they translated every instance where the word salmón came up as worm in English and Wurm in German: worm teriyaki, Wurm gebraten, worm in tomato sauce, Wurm mit Gemüse… I had lots of fun (still remember it today) and a coffee.
In the Hilton Hotel in Hokkaido the breakfast was announced as “Viking style”. I was underwhelmed when I found out they meant breakfast buffet.
Japan had lots of unexpected translations, but I did not yet have a digital camera then and did not take pictures.
I think they were aiming for Smörgåsbord, which is Swedish for “sandwich board.”
They’re called syrki in Russian, from syr (“cheese”). An entrepreneur on Dragon’s Den (aka Shark Tank) wanted to market them as “Russian cheesecake.”
And yes, they are delicious, especially when they’re filled with jam.
I would have been even more baffled. In the south Texas dialect of Spanish, beans are frijoles, or lentejas if referring specifically to lentils. I’ve never heard of judias used for beans. At first I thought maybe it was Catalan rather than Spanish, but sure enough Google translate lists judias as one of the words that beans translates into in Spanish.
Indeed, I should have specified that judías is Castillian Spanish for beans, fríjoles is American Spanish. Catalan calls the pulses mongetes (little nuns, which is also funny).
Both your examples are really hilarious. My own example is rather lame in comparison, when I was on vacation in the late 70s/early 80s with my family in Middelkerke, Belgium (in the Flemish speaking part of Belgium), one restaurant had “Steak mit Pinseln” on the German menu, which translates to “steak with paintbrushes”. We were confused and asked the waiter what it meant, and he or she answered “Oh, it’s a steak with champignons.”, and then the penny dropped, because mushrooms in German means (in the declined dative) “Pilzen”.