It was a night like any other – people inviting us out to a steakhouse. We get there, we are seated in a private room. All was well. Niceties aside, we prepare to order. I ask my wife what I should get. She says, “Go ahead and look at the menu – it’s in English.”
“Oh Really?”
I started out chuckling, then got progressively louder each time.
Yeah, that sounds like a bargain item.
“I think I’ll have the cowboy pick, or maybe the cowboy LEG?!?! I really wish I could shit you.”
What’s in a rurality salad? Country Music and buckshot?
I was so stunned by the English blunders herein, I had to buy the menu from them. Can you imagine the scene when that happened? I’ll never forget it. They couldn’t decide whether to be flattered or confused.
The Bcabe’s connected to the… um…
Can I get Retchup on the side?
I’m not quite that hungry, thanks.
Um… Is this vegetarian, then?
I didn’t know cucumbers had feet, let alone hooves.
what’s with all the verbs? But man, you had me at sweet and sour bone.
Bartender, I’ll have the usual!
wow, they love their cowboy meat here.
hold the foliage please.
Am I the only one turned on now? Guys? Anyone?
1 article pot: hometown? what the shit?
the scorn adds that little extra kick.
Nah, I think I’ll just have a Papsi.
maybe they should eat more words plum.
I’m starting to get nauseous at this point, but I’m still laughing. It gets better.
Wow – glad to know there are three “ignedients,” but what ARE THEY?
Aren’t these kung fu moves?
Is this like supersizing or what?
Do French Crips do drive-bys as well?
Do I order this or agree with it?
Does anyone order the “Strange Flavour of inside Freasure?”
man fruit? is that a euphemism?
Double boiled frog for dessert? does that come ala commode?
mordacity: a disposition to biting. Well, I should hope so. It’s a PIZZA – does it come in suppository form?
well, then, what the hell is it?
black bowel and cowboy leg? Add candlelight and you have yourself a date.
Isn’t this a show on CBS?
I passed on this.
lol. just pure lol.
how do you numb vegetables? and what’s fuck silk? satin?
What happens if I get that to go?
and with that, I’m stuffed. Duck Bukkake always makes me feel full.
But wait??!! Did you actually end up eating there?! Oh, and..Sour Bamboo Shoot Steams Fish Mouth? It’s the living euphemism!
That’s hilarious!!! Everytime we go to this Chinese restaurant in town, I order Mello Yello no ice.
She always repeats it back, “Mello Yello no eye.”
As a native Chinese, I have the feeling that the translator had “purposely” mis-translated some of the words….for example, “Good to eat mountain” , “fuck the salt” and “every form rape”, I can’t imagine how they got translated like this. And I doubt if it’s pure machine translation, because even a software would work better than this.
Anyway, I laughed so hard over this that there’re tears in my eyes. I think that only those who know the original meaning can fully understand the humor. I don’t think it’s racist, it’s only an extremely bad case of irresponsible translation work, which is not rare, I’m afraid.
Sorry about any typing/grammar problems in my post, I’ve been learning English for 8 years but I still have a long way to go.
Fuck! The salt! Salt the salting fuck salt! Salt! The fuck! F uck the fucking salt fuck!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyxNgnQ9m30
Fuck. The. Salt. Fuck, yeah!
I’m a Chinese in Hong Kong, the menu are one of the awesome fun topics between us and the inland Chinese, since Olympics will be launch in Beijing (Peking) soon, the Chinese need to translate everything into English, but they’re not willing to hire (or ask) the right people to do the job, that’s why these kind of funny translations were out.
Well, lot of westerners love to travel Hong Kong, but across the border (to China) is another world, fully of fun, adventure and danger.
Thank you so much. I’ll have the Red Date Silk Tube Container Steams Frog – to go.
Yes, is the Cowboy White or Dark meat?
Burn the spring chicken… That’s Cajun, right?
Can I get Dlum Juice AND Mexican cilliy sauce on my steak?
Have you tried a Color’s World?
In the Big Bowl White of Immerses Three Pill… Can I get Zanex, Vallium, and Hydrocidone?
I guess hell hath no fury like Fried beef Rice scorned.
Sankist, I didn’t know your sensi was so proud…
I didn’t know your restaurant had a Yakusa sens of humor about steaming food…
Add a peaceful… When the hell did Ghandi get here?
So how’s Whets the Almond these days?
Cowboy Leg Beautiful Pole… OMG! THAT’S what this is!!!! Full Metal PANTS Jacket… OR ELSE!!!!
Yes, I’d like to Moisten and Repair the Man Fruit on North Almond too… Hrny bas-tas!
When did we start plastering Coconut jews?
That Carbon wouldn’t happen to have the last name of Dallas would it? Confucius say, “The First Dish is often The Fifth Element…”
Those Hot Vegetables BETTER be “benumbed.” Fuck silk is delicate.
Is the Every Form Rape gender specific?
Animal Bukkake diagram, much?
OMG, I was almost ready to hit the hay, and I fell on this thing. Laughing myself to sleep is going to be tricky. My pick is the elegantly simple and straight to the point “Sweet and sour bone” Just tickled me more so than the others, although I will re-read it when fully awake, and no doubt find some others.
Thanks for the best laugh ever
err cant spell
PPP
Stupid diptwat bashers. It’s just a literally-translated menu. For all you people who think that this is racist and going ape-shit about it, you ARE overreacting. Take your head out of your ass; no one’s laughing at the PEOPLE who made this menu. The characters were more or less shoved through a literal translator that butchered their meanings, and that’s what’s funny. Not the people.
Yes, I am Chinese.
“Every form rape” has to be the ODDEST.
like…its just total lol.
Theres no other word.
The poor people who don’t know just how funny this actually is.
I had tears running down my face at “Cashew Not” (well, then, what the hell is it?). Wonderful, this really made my day.
I have to agree…we went to China, sat down in a wonderful Sezchuan restaurant in our hotel, started reading the menu and laughing harder and harder…we were afraid we were going to offend them. I almost bought a copy of the menu. There were things like “Frog ovaries in bloody bird’s nest” and “Sauteed Fish Lips bowl”.
[...] May I take your order? [...]
Where did you go for meal?
Beijing? Shanghai?
What is the name of that strange restaurant?
ok,friend,I was once a waitress in beijing for three months at a big restaurant which served expensive cusines.my job was serving custemers overseas who speak english,cause i can speak fluent english,the restaurant aslo had a menu which concluding “english names”,but however they must have confused the guests who the restaurant eagerly wanted to please,well.you all could imagine what happened.so I spent so much time to get the menu come into “normal”.and I am s till working on how to inprove the situation of help more restaurant to get a better translation of menu.that’s a big job,but I will try my best to avoid the mistakes,
being a chinese ,I apologize for what happened on you guys.
please get in touch with me, I’d like to get some suggestions from u .
thank u!
yours
As a Chinese, I must say I’m not offended and its actually very funny.
I don’t understand 格式油菜, though. The proper translation should be “assorted stir-fried vegetables” and the worst literal translation should be “Every Form Oil Vegetable”, so I don’t know why it ended up as “rape”. It’s not even phoenetically accurate. Personally, I think some translators over in China don’t like their job very much and just decided to have some fun.
that was awsome make sore to send more
I love this sooo much – it literally makes me weep until I nearly pass out……………no-one could possibly make this up – it’s too funny! And I thought my local Chinese takewaway in Clapham, South London was funny because it had “chicken wind” on the menu….Keep it coming…
I have seen and enjoyed strange manglish. Some favorites are the “Pitsa Parlore” in Bethlehem, Israel, “flyed Roster” at the Bamboo Curtain in Odgen Utah. In Guam a Korean restaurant had something with the note “gud and species wont keel you”. And numerous Chinese (our favorite food) from the Phillippines to the UK, but never so many so concentrated. My wife and I feared we needed medical treatment for leaking eyes, ruptured ribs and jellied bellies. Thank you for sharing it.
this is soooooo funny i nearly split my sides!!!!!
(however it does look a bit photo shoped)
I can’t believe I’ve spent more than an hour reading this menu and (not all) the comments. I laughed so hard I actually cried, and that doesn’t happen a lot. Thank you for sharing. You made my day
.
This sucks big time!
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i laughed so hard , i almost shit my pants … fuckin priceless
SO WHAT DID YOU ORDER?
I was once at a Thai restaurant and found out that I was drinking Diet Cock when the bill came.
This is a fucking masterpiece!!! Where did you get this shit?
That’s absolutely hilarious!
And the know-all “this is racist guy” getting pwned made me laugh almost as much :p
OHHH MY GOD!!! I am crying. That was so funny. I have always wanted to go to China and Japan because their cultures are so different. Now, I want to go just to see the mistranslations. I speak fluent Spanish (even though I am completely gringo. You could say I look like Caspar.) and used to live in Spain, and loved it when we would see mistranslations. For instance embarrazar means to impregnate, not to embarrass. See how that could get a little, . . . um . . . embarrassing (Sorry, bad joke, but I had too.) But Spanish and English have related words, cognates. Chinese doesn’t. Makes it so much better. Some one said this is a fake and that it is racist. If it is, well then I guess I’m going to hell for being a racist, because I thought it was funny. But everybody else, even people that speak chinese said it looks real. So, lets go ahead and believe them so we can laugh without the guilt.
I am SOO going to China.
ahhhh. way to cheer me up when i’m awake far too late and class is beginning in 3 hours. “cashew not” is my favorite…
also, i know with certainty that i think this funny because of the silliness of the word combinations. i do not laugh at whichever person wrote it! i speak three languages fairly well and bad translations are some of my favorite things. if you take life so seriously that this is found insulting, i feel badly for you.
“Fuck the salt” This is classic, couldn’t stop laughing. Have to show everyone I know now…Thanks!!!
[...] — Here’s some funny Chinese menu translations! Posted in Comedy, [...]
that was… amazing… i laughed for a half an hour.
Haha, good stuff. Yeah, I’ve seen really funny translations in Yunnan, China as well. One that was funny “pasta with meat sauce” was translated into something along the lines of “meat face tomato paste.” The reason is “pasta” is pronounced “mien” in Chinese, but “mien” is also the word for “face.” I think there are a lot of mistranslations like these.
I got to give them credit for trying though! I wonder the Chinese would have a good laugh at English menus if they tried translating them to Chinese!!!
ROFL, like literally… this is hilarious
[...] Visto en Rahoi. [...]
[...] So I stumbled upon one of the funniest blog entry I’ve read in a long time. I don’t know if it’s because I can read Chinese, but this entry from Rahoi.com is just flat out hilarious. It appears the owner of this particular Chinese restaurant overestimated his English prowess and unintentionally created the funniest Chinese restaurant menu ever. Would you like some “burn the spring chicken?”, how about some “good to eat mountain?”, or do you prefer the “sour bamboo shoot steams fish mouth?” You gotta check this out [...]
lol, wow. I haven’t taken Mandarin, but after learning a bit of Spanish you know that this isn’t the only language that surface translates weirdly…
That was F*cking amazing!
People who say that this type of thing is racist probably has no idea about certain aspects of the culture of places like Hong Kong. From personal experience bilingual (by that I don’t just mean Chinese and English but also Cantonese and Mandarin) jokes are part of everyday life in Hong Kong (you see this basically everyday on shows that seriously teaches English, and my classmates in Hong Kong talks and laughs about it), and people don’t actually mind it that much.
Last summer, my wife and I found ourselves in Capitola, California for dinner. Several restaurants line the waterfront there. One I refused to eat in has this slogan on its sign: “Capitola’s FUNNEST Restaurant”. See this at: http://www.capecodphotoalbum.com/CapitolasFunnestBar.jpg . Oh, we ended up at Zelda’s On the Beach, a wonderful place with a 10.99 crab leg special and $1.99 drinks. Highly recommended!
Back on the Grammar Police blotter, one of my pet peeves is the use of adjectives when adverbs are required. It’s getting so bad that someone ought to print a bumper sticker: “ADVERBS are DYING QUICK”. But then, those who most need this won’t get it, will they?
OH my GOD! I laughed until I cried… and then collapsed from coughing too hard.
Are you still married to that broad? Because I believe I would have her buried by now!
Best stumble yet!
you like this you’ll love this: http://www.engrish.com
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Comment 12 from the Anonymous professor of Chinese studies really sorts all this out. Thanks alot. You must be a great teacher!