Manglish Menus and Signs

[skepticalboffin]

I always keep my phone handy at Chinese restaurants, because who knows when I might be presented with the opportunity to document hideously mangled English like these gems below:

Comments

[mmebahorel]

I think that last one is actually truth in advertising to white people (yes, I am generalising to a large extent). Tripe, tendon, feet, snout, liver - why jazz it up with a fancy term like "offal" when we all know it's just spare parts :) (reduces the number of "awful" jokes, too.)

[skepticalboffin]

Haha, yeah, where food is concerned, they *are* spare parts - and parts that people have no business touching! (Ew).

[coloneldespard]

Hah! Love it! Of course, I think of what would happen if I tried to translate a menu into, say, French...the results would be equally dodgy, albeit not as hilarious.

"Western Sauce Lamp" has me intrigued. Some sort of steamboat?

[skepticalboffin]

ROFL! Yeah, literal translations are a funnybomb waiting to happen. (Richard Lederer, author of the Anguished English books - which collect hilarious examples of the English language being mangled - once committed the error of making a literal translation when asking for a "hot dog" at a deli in Germany. And of course he got laughed at, because "heisser hund" meant "dog in heat"...).

[And it's supposed to be "Western Sauce LamB". ;)]