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Beijing Olympics and Chinese Food Menu II "世界上什麼問題最大？吃的問題最大!” ~毛澤東 "What is the biggest problem in this world? Eating it is!" ~Mao Zedong So one of the supreme achievements the communists proud of is that they solved the over 1 billion people’s eating problem. In a flash, Beijing is now anticipating its realization of the 2008 Olympics. Now that our country is flourishing, time to resolve the eating problem for the millions of foreign visitors, time to save face by correcting the ridiculous word-to-word chinglish translation menu to be shown to the excited athletes and visitors to Beijing 2008, time to prevent ‘government abuse chicken’ from happening and ‘husband and wife’s lungs’ from appearing on the tables. In a word, it is time to save the nation from swamping into the international sarcasm. Therefore, Beijing City Government has decided to launch the campaign to Unify English Translation for Chinese Food Menu. They have uploaded several thousands of dishes and drinks on government portal beijingdotgov.cn & beijingenglishdotcomdotcn for food industry and people’s reference. Expatriates and experts are invited to comment on these translated names from Dec. 20 to 29, 2006. I’ve visited their websites. Thousands of names listed in Chinese/English are displayed there for free view and comment, divided into categories like Seafood (aha, mostly Cantonese Food), Poultry, Pork, Beef, Vegetable, Mushroom, Staple and Snacks, Desert, Chinese Wine, and Foreign Wine. I was astonished reading, it was like taking them all. I saw them and smelled them, watering. But discussion goes there, what will be good translation of the Chinese food menu? The translation,usually depicting the ingredients and cooking way, just cannot pass on all the meaning and cultural notes as they carry in their Chinese name ‒ and usually a concise Chinese dish name is deconstructed into a tedious English name. What’s the way out? Some suggest put the Mandarin transliteration as the main name, annotated with English names. This offers foreigners the opportunity a direct feel and touch into Chinese language and a better way to communicate/interact with local people if they can pronounce the Mandarin name. I agree. Chinese food indeed is part of Chinese Culture. There are so many legends and stories behind our food. Only literal or long explanation translation cannot work out the whole picture. One dish is connected with historical or folk stories, with politician, poet and scholar, even with the fate of the whole country and people. Do you have some examples? I’ll give you two or three next time. How comes the name gong bao ji ding, dongpo pork and fu qi fei pian? |
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Sayhell, Yours is great idea. Pls go to Beijing government website to suggest. Pin Yin in characters can help foreigners. Time for setting up institute like what the British, French, Portuguese have been doing to promote our language and culture, but not to be taken up completely by western culture, even Japanese/Koren.
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