Chinese feasts for the British PM – a few thoughts
Today, the Daily Telegraph published menus of the lunch and dinner served to the British Prime Minister David Cameron yesterday in Beijing. Lunch, apparently, was ‘hors…
Fancy a buckwheat noodle enema?
I know it’s something of a cliche to giggle at Chinese menu mistranslations, but the menu I came across at lunchtime today was such a spectacular…
Anyone for chop suey at the Chinese Delmonico?
Thanks to Cool Culinaria for sending me samples from their new collection of vintage Chinese restaurant menu prints, which date from the late nineteenth century to…
Public explosion chicken!
This is the best mistranslation on a Chinese menu that I’ve seen in a long time, Gong Bao chicken rendered as ‘Public explosion chicken!’ Whoever came…
You say tomayto I say tomahta
Last week I gave a talk at the Free Word Centre in London about the challenges of translating into English the language of Chinese food and…
Crazy menu translations
The photographer Ian Cumming was my partner-in-crime on one of my Xinjiang food research trips. It was a hilarious couple of weeks: we were trailed by…