No "steamed crap" or virgin chicken" on the Beijing Olympics menu next summer

[SykkBoy]

BEIJING - Hungry visitors to next summer's Beijing Olympics won't have to choose between "steamed crap" and "virgin chicken" if Chinese authorities succeed in ridding restaurant menus of mangled English translations.

The Beijing Tourism Bureau has released a list with 2,753 proposed names for dishes and drinks, designed to replace bizarre and sometimes ridiculous translations on menus, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Friday.

Foreigners are often stumped by dish names such as "virgin chicken" (a young chicken dish) or "burnt lion's head" (Chinese-style pork meatballs). Other garbled names include "The temple explodes the chicken cube" (kung pao chicken) or "steamed crap" (steamed carp).

"These translations either scare or embarrass foreign customers and may cause misunderstanding on China's diet habits," Xinhua said.

It's the latest effort by Beijing Olympics organizers to clean up the city and ensure that the best image is presented to the hundreds of thousands of visitors expected next summer.

Etiquette campaigns are afoot to stamp out bad manners such as jumping ahead in line, spitting, littering and reckless driving. The revised menu names are part of an effort to ban unintelligible English, known as "Chinglish," that abounds on signs everywhere.

A team set up by the Beijing Municipal Foreign Affairs Office and Beijing Tourism Bureau has been working on the menu names for more than a year, Xinhua said. Translators developed names for dishes based on one of four categories: ingredients, cooking method, taste, or the name of a person or place.

For example, a dish with mushrooms and ducks' feet will be listed as simply "Mushroom-Duck's Foot." Others proposed names include "Fish Filets in Hot Chili Oil" and "Crispy Chicken."

The tourism bureau is soliciting public opinion on the translations. Once a final decision is made on the list of names, they will be used in restaurants across China, Xinhua said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070831/...Uk M4NSqek3QF

[Fletch XXX]

when i used to eat meat, i liked "The temple explodes the chicken cube"

[MetaMan]

I really hope the olympics is a bust in China....

[SykkBoy]

Originally Posted by Fletch XXX

when i used to eat meat, i liked "The temple explodes the chicken cube"

yeah, one of my favorite dishes

I'll pass on the steamed crap though....does anyone really eat that sort of fish?

[Tom_PM]

"Chinglish"? Never heard that expression before reading that. Burnt lions head sounds pretty far off from pork meatballs, so good idea fixing that stuff up. Dont care what they call mushrooms with ducks feet.. still can't imagine eating that one.

[ridikuloz]

Good Engrish is the way to go.

[marzzo]

Originally Posted by SykkBoy2

yeah, one of my favorite dishes

I'll pass on the steamed crap though....does anyone really eat that sort of fish?

Sometimes it's smoked (on a grill, not in a bong ;) and it's a common ingredient in processed fishsticks too.

edit: carp, not crap