a dish by any other name...

[miriam1978]

For the summer Olympics, Beijing hotels and restaurants are rewriting menus, giving dishes Western-friendly names. Personally, I think this sucks. And not just because "chicken with no sexual life" makes me very, very curious. Couldn't they just add brief descriptions below the names instead of replacing them? Leave a comment

Comments

[anonymous]

I have mixed feelings about this. The writer (and kitsch-lover) in me thinks it sucks. Appetizing or not, replacing "bean curd made by a pock-marked woman" suggests an interesting story that the better-known name, "Ma Po Tofu," just doesn't.

But on the other hand, Chinese "mis"translations have been the butt of English-speakers' jokes for years. There are whole websites devoted to them. And though I also think they're hilarious, they DO perpetuate a mentality of "Oh, those silly Chinese people, and their ridiculous names" instead of appreciating the language (and culture) for what it is: heavy on connotation and imagery, highly associative, and often, non-literal. There are stories encoded in a lot of Western food names too (e.g., Chicken a la king, submarine sandwich, tuna surprise), but we don't think they're funny because they've become commonplace to us; we just don't notice them anymore. That's how Chinese food names sound to most Chinese people. When they hear "Ma Po tofu," they don't think "pockmarked woman." They think, "Oh, (that particular spicy tofu dish), yum."

So yeah, though "Ma Po Tofu" does literally mean "bean curd made by a pockmarked woman," without someone there to explain the story behind the name, it's just something for non-Chinese-speakers to snigger at. Which rubs me the wrong way. At that point, it's a cheap joke, and they're laughing at the Chinese, not with.

Now, if the government were to sponsor a Chinese cultural guide to sit at each table with the foreign visitors and explain how each dish got its name... well, perhaps I could get behind that.

Wow. Serious post. Don't worry, I won't let it happen again.

CNg

[miriam1978]

Good points. I guess that what I found offensive about the idea of changing the names is that it caters entirely to a Western way of thinking about food and blocks any access to a more associative language or any kind of genuine experience in China. Of course you're right that most tourists (especially Americans), wherever they go, are going to misunderstand the culture around them and likely poke some fun at the differences between it and their own. But changing the entire way you name dishes in one's own country in order to prevent this misunderstanding kind of forces a specific, limited view. And I don't think it's protectiveness that inspires this; I think it's convenience for the foreign consumer and the pressure/desire to make a buck because people are going to eat where they feel comfortable and can understand the menu. Maybe I shouldn't squirm at comfort, but I feel like "travelers" who never want to leave the shadow of the Golden Arch are not really traveling at all anyway - just paying a lot of money to fly somewhere that also has a Pottery Barn and a Starbucks in slightly older or differently designed buildings - if that.

I think what English-speakers make fun of more than anything else on translated menus are the poor quality of translations, not the creative names. They *enjoy* and respond to these descriptive names, but they can't admire them properly (consciously or subconsciously) because they're tangled up in odd syntactical errors or grammar mistakes that result in unintentional humor. I agree that the example of our unplucked chicken would probably need a more thorough re-translation (anything sexual in nature makes Americans giggle too hard to order), but couldn't these Beijing restaurants include both a description of the food and a more nuanced translation? Yet as I type this, I realize that would be very hard to manage and expensive to produce. Sigh... no perfect answers here.

But it's interesting that there is such a fine line between mockery and appreciation in American culture. This certainly walks it!