In an entertaining article in the Washington Post last week by Jane Black she discussed how much spelling and grammar mistakes on restaurant menus bother her. Here’s her fantasy:
I enter a restaurant, order and sweetly ask the waiter if I can “hold on to the menu” during dinner. Then, using a distinctive purple pen, I discreetly copy-edit the descriptions of the dishes.
Caesar, not “caeser.” Shiitake, not “shitake.” Riesling, not “reisling” (though I’d quietly applaud restaurants that spell it wrong as long as the misspelling was consistent.)
Black will be in trouble if she ever comes to Budapest, where the menu mistakes would be way too many to correct with her purple pen. Spelling mistakes on menus is something that has long bothered me also, although in Hungary I excuse the spelling mistakes because the people writing the menus are Hungarian speakers, not native English speakers. (Black excuses ethnic restaurants from her rant as well). In Hungary it’s the often hilarious menu translations which stand out more than the excusable spelling mistakes. One of the most memorable that I have come across was the “chicken make you slobber” at a Chinese restaurant. I assume that the menu writer meant to say something along the lines of “mouthwatering chicken.” And then there is carp, that common Hungarian fish, which I have seen countless times spelled as “crap.” True, many people think that it is, but it’s not a very appealing description.
I generally find these translation mistakes to be entertaining rather than annoying (after all, if I had to translate a menu to Hungarian it wouldn’t be a pretty sight). But I do wonder why it is that so many restaurants here can print their menus (which at traditional places can be very long and often laminated, which is surely expensive) without having someone who speaks English at least read it over. But I guess that is just the copy editor in me.
On the other hand, it does really get to me when menu writers translate “pörkölt” (a typical Hungarian stew) as “goulash” into English. This happens constantly, and it just perpetuates the wrongly-held notion outside of Hungary that goulash (gulyás) is a stew. In Hungary it’s not a stew, but a soup. These menu writers who purposely mis-translate it just add to the confusion. I cannot tell you how many times that I have had discussions with waiters to try to get to the bottom of whether or not the dish listed was actually a soup or a stew. I once ordered a gulyás and received a pörkölt only to have the waiter insist to me that it was goulash. Even the fact that I ordered in Hungarian could not convince him that I knew the difference and that what I wanted was actually the soup, and not the stew. Do restaurateurs think that foreigners cannot understand the difference between the two? Now I have taken to either only using the Hungarian menu, or comparing the English menu to the Hungarian before I order. Maybe Hungary should do what the Chinese government has done and make an official list of suggested translations, even if it is just for these to two oft confused dishes.
6 Comments
June 22, 2008 at 12:01 pm
There may be a an excuse for mistranslating ponty as ‘crap’ rather than ‘carp’ as this is how their neighbours the Romanian spell it (http://www.crap.ro/). Ok, so that’s a feeble excuse, just trying to be generous for once.
I’ve translated a few menus and it can be tricky in parts. For example, for an Italian restaurant, you have to decide whether to use English, French or Italian (should it be called starters, hors d’oeuvre or antipasto?). It may just depend on how posh you think the overall menu is and where the restaurant is (play to the lowest common denominator)
When the Hungarian menu says ‘nyers sonka’ do they mean specifically ‘prosciutto’ (quite likely) or just ‘dry cured ham’ (general, but hardly inviting).
Even worse take the ubiquitous drink ‘frappé’, Hungarians don’t mean frappé in the Greek sense (a wonderful coffee invention), not the french, nor the New England (milk shake), no the Hungarians use the word in the same way as Serbians do as a kind of ice-cream (fruit) milkshake.
But all that aside the thing I *really* hate on Hungarian menus is the translation of regional dishes or styles. So ‘Egri módra’ gets translated as ‘Eger style’. What? What on earth is Eger style? Of course now I’m use to this nonsense, but even Hungarians are clueless on this linguistic game, in their own language, too.
Please excuse any spelling mistakes in my comment.
June 22, 2008 at 7:59 pm
For your informations (sic), includes plenty of examples from menus:
http://fuckedtranslation.blogspot.com/
June 23, 2008 at 4:24 pm
Carolyn,
While I enjoyed your book — I find your complaint about misspellings a bit ironic.
1) You spelled Krúdy Gyula multiple ways, sometimes even on the same page.
2) Your husband’s(?) name Bánfalvi Gábor was spelled with the first ‘á’ intact, but the second missing.
3) There were other odd misspellings as well.
4) Lastly, why did you choose a typeface that could not render all of the Hungarian letters? That made absolutely no sense to me.
However, I do commend you on your recommendation of one of my favorite haunts, the little known Bajor söröző és kolbászda. Good food and good prices.
June 23, 2008 at 4:38 pm
Glad you liked my book. I totally agree with you about all of those mistakes that you mentioned (and I am the first to admit that my Hungarian spelling is terrible). Regarding the spelling of my husband’s name, that copyright page was written by someone else (and it obviously stuck out like a sore thumb as soon as I saw it AFTER the book was already printed). The typeface is a long story, but to make it short the designer did not have one that could handle those difficult accents, so the publisher decided to make do with that one….which bothered me as well, especially since all of those long o’s and u’s got converted into funny characters that had to be corrected on the proofs. I’m sorry that there were other odd spelling mistakes (if you feel like it you could let me know by email what they were), which obviously really grate on my eyes when I see them on the pages of my own book! Have you been to the Bajor lately? I like that little place also, but the last time I went it was not quite as good as it usually is.
June 23, 2008 at 4:42 pm
Vándorló:
“But all that aside the thing I *really* hate on Hungarian menus is the translation of regional dishes or styles. So ‘Egri módra’ gets translated as ‘Eger style’. What? What on earth is Eger style? Of course now I’m use to this nonsense, but even Hungarians are clueless on this linguistic game, in their own language, too.”
Yes! Why not just add a description about what these styles are? Some places do that already, but usually the waiters have to run back and ask the chef what the dishes are, because they don’t even know them all themselves. Also, adding a few words of description would be much more appealing that just saying “Eger Style.”
August 3, 2008 at 8:05 pm
Thanks !
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