Tuesday 27 March 2018

Threatened by your menu?



The English language can be a dangerous weapon when it gets into the wrong hands! This is nowhere more evident than in the world of catering, where restaurant menus that make perfect sense in their native language are translated for the benefit of their English-speaking customers.

Many years ago a work colleague told me that she had been alarmed at being offered “Cheese threatened by ham”. 

I have been on the lookout for similar mistranslations ever since, and here are a few that seem to be in a similar vein (although not seen by me personally):

  • Fried chicken babies, fungus cream and grill cattle bowels
  • Chicken Gordon blue, pork shops, eggs scrambling
  • Buttered saucepans and fried hormones
  • Fried milk, children sandwiches, roast cattle and boiled sheep
  • Steamed fillet of new zeal and orange roughy
  • Chopped cow with a wire through it
  • Dreaded veal cutlet with potatoes in dream
  • Pork with fresh garbage

Then there was the Chinese takeaway I drove past in Worcestershire that declared that it offered China Meals to Take Away – you could see what they meant, but it just didn’t sound quite right!

© John Welford

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