What exactly is 'Hand Shredded A$$ Meat'? A new dictionary for Chinese restaurants may tell you

NBC News ^ | 4/21/2012 | Bo Gu

[Ready4Freddy]

BEIJING – Overseas tourists often find the menus here befuddling, for good reason.

After all, what Westerner has experience with foods like these? “Cowboy leg,” “Hand-shredded ass meat,” “Red-burned lion head,” “Strange flavor noodles,” “Blow-up flatfish with no result,” or “Tofu made by woman with freckles.”

As proud as the Chinese people are of their thousands of years of gastronomic culture, even a Chinese native can feel disoriented when going to another province, given all the different styles of cooking. Many of the food names, often unique to different provinces, get lost in translation, especially in booming cities starting to embrace overseas tourists.

With few English speakers, restaurants usually translate their menus word by word directly from an English-Chinese dictionary. Or they just Google the Chinese characters. A photo that made the rounds online a few years ago got a chuckle from a lot of people: a restaurant with a large “page not found” sign above its door as its English name.

[Ready4Freddy]

How often do you get to post an article title like that? ;)

[bgill]

Don’t cross me or I’ll do the #10 with egg roll on you.

[Paine in the Neck]

I used to use the tagline "Napolean fries the idea powder". I got it from a chinglish menu where it was listed as one of the food items. After many years I have yet to figure out what it could be.

[Yo-Yo]

Required reading: Engrish.com

[mvpel]

“Hand-shredded ass meat,” ...

[Crazieman]

Ahh, the inverted kind!

[Paine in the Neck]

I see we have a USDA employee to inspect those. Your taxes at work.

[Ready4Freddy]

Nothing but the very best!

[martin_fierro]

“That wasn’t chicken” Chicken.

[baddog 219]

Cinese Chicken go Meow!

[KarlInOhio]

You no get dog here. Obama special at Indonesian restaurant down the street.

[Calvin Locke]

From my b-school IT class, the anecdote about the first English-Russian/Russian-English translation program, inputting “The spirit is strong, but the flesh is weak” came back out as “The drink is strong, but the meat is bad.”

[mykroar]

In Soviet Russia, ass meat shreds you!

[Caipirabob]

No wonder Obama likes them so much.

[Erasmus]

I heard that one came from an early USAF translating computer project. Another one was

“Out of sight, out of mind” —> “Blind, insane”

[Carriage Hill]

LOL! You photoshopped that one, didn’t you? WTH are *those things*? NO, I don’t want to know.

[Erasmus]

BTW, I heard the first one as “The spirit is willing....”

[Erasmus]

Chinese SPCA motto: “To Serve Dogs.”

[goseminoles]

The funny word there is “inverted”.

[Calvin Locke]

Could be, could be.

Been twenty years. Need...more...coffee...

IOW, your version is probably the right one.