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.
There’s a doomed restaurant space on Phoenix’s main avenue that was a West Indian place for a while. I noticed that the menu, which seemed to be entirely composed by native English-speaking restaurant types, featured a “mescaline” salad. (I have to think they meant mesclun.) On my way out I mentioned it to the waitress and told her they might want to change it. “Wow, really,” she said. “The customer who edited that for us is sitting right there. . .”
hilarious!
Oh my god, oh my god! I can’t stop laughing…
fuck the salt? those are so funnay i havent laughed so hard in a long time, awesome job on making these
about the cowboy legs, the chinese version meant cow boy but they put it together and that’s whatmakes it funny
this didn’t make me laugh at all, this was shit
to bad that every resturant in the world didn’t have to acomindate every other language. You stupid white people think it’s so easy to know English. Try learning a different language and write a book. I bet you couldn’t do it without messing up.
I also want to know what you ordered!
You might want to share your find with:
http://www.engrish.com/
This must surely be from a restaraunt in Qingdao. Or somewhere else in the Shenzen kind of area.
Worth noting that the translations are , from a Chinese point of view, almost completely literal.
Chinese people could make no more sense of, say, ‘Scotch Egg’ or ‘Spotted Dick’, than we could make of some of their foods.
They do a much better job of writing english than I ever could chinese. But it is still hilarious.
Friggin’ classic example of Engrish. Even better than the fugazi subtitles on the Episode III bootleg from some months back. And anonymous haters can go to hell.
I can’t breath propely anymore I thank you gave me asthma from laughing so much – worth it
HAHAHAHAHAAAHAHAHAHHAHHHA OMG OMG I NEED TO GO TO CHINA!!!
LMAO!!!
-Cesar
ROFLMAO!!! I wet myself!
WTF is “sparerib” or “Colour`s world”???
Big Bowl white of immerses three pill WTF???
Qiet Lady???
Lthick mordacity – a thick opposition to biting – What I feel about the rest of the menu
– Burning Pi
oh my gosh my stomach hurts from laughing so hard. that was awesome. shoot me now i can’t stop laughing. thanks
misty
Thank you!
I laughed so hard (2AM here) that I woke my daughter! I tucked her back into bed and I had to post a comment here!
I’m Chinese living in USA. I speak and write Chinese and have parents living with me that to this day translates their thoughts from Chinese to English word for word. We have many laughs in our house here because of that. Life’s too short. Learn to laugh, especially at one’s self.
It’ll make a happier life. Heck, if I’m Chinese and don’t find this offensive, why should anyone else. 
“Sidrsts” is actually what we Americans call French Toast. The Chinese is “West toast” (or Western Toast). “Do-si” is the Cantonese transliteration for toast.
A “geng” is a thick soup (as opposed to “tong”, a broth-based soup).
I don’t get how “cowboy leg” got into 5001. If you compare it to “cowboy leg” in the 3rd graphic, it’s completely different.
I think these were all translated by an American who called themself as “Chinese Experts”, they live in China, Hong Kong or Taiwan and teaching English for living, but most of them can’t or only read a little bit of Chinese, according to the list of the menu, they are not tranditional Chinese characters, those Chinese characters were invented by Hong Kong people, you can’t find those characters in the Chinese dictionnary,the translation in English are using the word that are not common to any Chinese, I don’t think a Chinese person can comes up with this kind of translation. Open your mind and think, if this make sense to you at all. These translation were done by a non-responsible American.
—————–
Whoever said this is a HUGE idiot that can’t deal with a bit of laughter. If it was somebody who was a native English speaker, they would have KNOWN these translations were wrong because they wouldn’t make sense in their own language. Obviously it’s somebody who doesn’t know any English…
http://engrish.com/
I haven’t laughed this hard in years.
I haven’t laughed this hard in years.
hey anoymous dude
you know, they do the same in china, making fun of foreigners for their chinese
eg bank of china, thought it was china is very good (only a bit of difference) also, i highly doubt its a fake. there are stupid things out there in the world, waiting to be laughed at.
anyway, those must be the most screwed up translations ever. Sure, i’ve seen pirated discs on the back with a completely different blurb to the cd, (side dish of bad spolling included) but who would put the word fuck in a menu?
I think “Cowboy Leg, Beautiful Pole” should be Ang Lee’s next film. You could call it “Brokeback Mountain” meets “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”!
Yo Mama Cracker Fishfuck
Linked at:
World’s Worst Chinese Menu Translation
Thanks for the hilarious post!
On an unrelated note… Does anyone know where I can find some pretty salt?
The poor restaurant owner (most likely doesn’t know a word of English) translated the Chinese menu word for word literally with a Chinese-English dictionary, hoping to get some English speaking customers. The profit they made on you, say $0.20 max, is not even close to the entertainment they provided for you and your friends. Have you considered going back there and giving them some money? Or helping them with the translation, now you’ve gotten lots and lots of laughs out of it?
I think it is dead funny too. I’m not offended as an Asian-American, like white trashes are not offended by “My name is Earl”. Talking about that, I think from karma perspective, you need to do something for that restaurant. Be a decent man and go back there and translate the menu for them, ok? Or your Chinese is not good enough to do that.
i’m laughing and crying so hard, i scared my cat away. thanks for making my day!
Four years later, I still regret that I didn’t buy the cook-book in Swedish that I found in Greece.
Take out your liver, wash it and cut it into small pieces.
So you don’t have to travel very long to find things affecting your appetite.
Two for the price of one – not only was this hysterically funny, it’s a real learning opportunity.I don’t know darn of Chinese, but it was obvious that somehow, someone or some software program was attempting to translate idiomatic expressions into literal English. Trying to decipher that process is worth much more than the laughs. And I am sure that if I attempted to translate any English into any other language, the results would be just as outrageous and I would be laughing at my own attempts right along with the native speakers.
‘Every Form Rape’? That’s not a food, that’s a sex crime…
This is sooo funny – better than the Italian Laundry notice that said ‘Ladies, leave your clothes here and spend the afternoon having fun’.
“Man fruit braise the north almond” either has to be a line from a Robert Bly poem, or a coded message from a terrorist group. Either way, I’ll have a steamin’ heap!
Hey, it’s not just the Chinese who have trouble with English syntax. There was a sign up in Hopkins, Minnesota for years on a candy manufacturing co. that read “People needed in December to pack fudge”. Lets see THEIR menu!
Finally, I’ve seen this “fuck” thing in Chinatown in NYC plenty of times, sometimes scratched out by humorless fun-police visting the neighborhood. You poor people that can’t laugh, go chew on a duck chin!
Please forgive me, but I live way back in the woods and I don’t know what “lol” means. I get everything else. And, godamighty, am I hungry now!
Hi all – thanks for the comments!
to answer some questions, I had the “Sheep Leg New Zealand” and some form of “Staghssd Noodle.” A bunch of us shared steaks, too. It was quite good. My wife got “Carbon Burns the Black Bowel.” Yes, it was just as gross as it sounds.
The restaurant was called “Edinburgh Western Chinese Restaurant.” It’s in Foshan, which is in the south of China. Famous for kung fu and now, for this.
As for offering to help them translate the menu – they honestly don’t care. I wouldn’t be surprised if they had never had an English speaker in there before me. They do it to keep the appearance of being a western restaurant. But it matters little to them. Food is the true international language.
For those of you who like this kind of thing, I’ve taken TONS of these kind of pics in my travels, and some are just as funny. Please look around – i have gathered some of them here.
And of course, I have a few hundred more Mangled English (aka Manglish) pics that I haven’t even posted yet – stay tuned!
I was born with blocked tear ducts and never cried before… Not until reading this. This is honestly the funniest thing I have ever read in my entire life.
Racist? Hell no. I lived over there for a year and a half, and the mistranslations are all over there.
The “Fuck” ones are, admittedly, a little hard to figure, but for the most part, the translation looks almost right. Well, almost in that really fucked up way.
i am chinese. this is fake, all the translations by man are wrong.
Every form rape? Dude, the entire menu is great! Where the hell did you find this?
I am not chinese, but I also frown on all of mankinds inability to translate.
haha, the translation is funny,right? As a Chinese student,i can’t help laughing at those automatic translations either.
However, i am doing a research on how to put Chinese menu into English correctly.
I think you might interest in Chinese food. Well… Would you recommend some website to me? I greatly appreciate your help. ^_^
Nicole
littlequin@hotmail.com
I find it as mind boggling and as enchanting as Pi itself
(it didn’t really say “Duck Bukkake” did it???)
Shit like this makes me happy to be alive
Hmmmmm Pi/Pie…..Circles…..the circle of life from a birth to a death, all I look for in life, is happyness (Pie)
The planets appear circular from one perspective/distance…… every energy cannot vanish, only change, all life forms are made of the same things, everything relies on everything else…………
awwww I wish clever people would hurry up and work out the universe so I could know everything before I croak.
Ignorance = depression, depression = comfort eating…… comfort eating = Pie
Pi is everything, everything is Pi
nothing is anything
everything is something.
Duck Bukkake hahahahahaha
(fuckin “sheet iron”? quality post!)
http://www.craig-mansfield.co.uk/diary.html
and…………….
“I still a amazed at how many people still do this to make Chinese people seem continually unable to master the English language.”
Oh the irony
Calm doon, sell “frog leg”, and stop bullying Korea.
(and the word “freakin” isn’t English, it’s American English (which is something of an oxymoron in my opinion) so your “mastery of the English Language” still needs some work, Brian…..or whatever name you’ve chosen to mask the fact that you’re actually called “Hung” which is another irony as you’re Chinese, and not
hahaha)
wa wa wahhhhhhhhhhh hahaha
AND
apparrenly I’m a “lovely puff”
Lovely Puff from Hong Kong!
the message is clear: if you can’t read chinese, go eat somewhere else, whitie.
Ok it’s slightly funny… but not that funny.
Ger over yourselves, people!
(not you, them)
I’ll have the cowboy leg beautiful pole, please.
“every form rape” gets my vote.
i’m reminded at this point of a local restaurant of our own… it’s english speaking and everything, but one of the things on the menu is the now infamous “wiener schnitzel”. one of the side orders is the “creamy poundies”. i reckon that if you can order a wiener schnitzel with creamy poundies without laughing in the waiter’s face, you don’t have to pay for it.
EVER FORM RAPE!!! WOOO!!! LMAO!!!!
oh my god. I just died. That was too funny. lol
I laughed so hard I almost peed my pants!
I have a Chinese menu with only one error.. instead of Hunan Shrimp, the printed error reads ‘Human Shrimp’…lol! This still does not compare!
Thanks for sharing!
Jass
I’m sure it says something terrible about my sense of humor, but I love this sort of thing. I love it even more when I make the mistake myself. Once when I was visiting Germany I got hopelessly lost. Fortunately, I had a map. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any street signs (they’re on the buildings, not on separate poles like in the US). Finally I found one. Rescused! Unfortunately, I couldn’t find it on the map…after a longish period of looking, I thought more about what the sign actually said: Einbahnstrasse…One (something I didn’t recognize at the time) street…Oh: one way street. I laughed so hard at myself I nearly fell over. Fortunately, my hysterical laughter attracted a friendly English speaker who oriented me. I still can’t believe I fell for the old “tourist writes down the name of the street she’s staying on from a sign outside her hotel, only to find out that the sign said ‘one way street’” trick. I’m probably just lucky that I didn’t follow the signs to the famous town of Umleitung.