Why do we drive on the parkway,
but park in the driveway?
Posted on 04/13/2007 8:55:07 AM PDT by kevin_in_so_cal
English language experts say that, with the 2008 Olympics less than 500 days away, there is still a long way to go before standard English translations of the names of dishes and drinks sold in Beijing restaurants can be finalized.
Garbled and misleading English signs in tourist spots have long confused English speakers in Beijing. Problems range from obscure abbreviations, word-for-word translations of Chinese characters into English, improper omissions and misspellings.
But what confuses them even more are English menus in Beijing restaurants.
However, not everyone agrees with the need to standardize everything. "Weird and wonderful English on Beijing menus -- like "pee soup", "complicated cakes" and "grass with fishy smell" -- are part of the city's charm," said Theo Theodopolopodis, a Greek businessman who has been living in Beijing for two years. "If we sanitize everything, what happens to local flavor?"
Liu Yang, vice director of the Beijing foreign affairs office, told reporters Wednesday that his office has invited English language experts from the United States, the United Kingdom and Singapore to join the English menu translation work team.
"They are finding the work challenging," said Liu, adding that Beijing has already publicized standard English signs for museums, scenic spots and subways.
Liu said that Beijing Speaks Foreign Languages Programme has been using the internet to identify the most accurate English names for Chinese dishes, and is working on a list of more than 1,000 dish and drink names.
Beijing claims to have 4.87 million residents who can speak English, accounting for 32 percent of the total population in the municipality.
Statistics indicate that around 2.85 million foreign tourists came to Beijing last year and the number is expected to top three million this year.
Another is "missle" when they mean "missile".
Sigh.
Very Thurgood post.
That is one of my favorite sites in the whole world. But NEVER click on that when you absolutely positively have to keep quiet. I learned from experience.
you want to bet by 2016 when the Olympics hopefully happens in Chicago all the hand wringing will be over if one little thing is not in Spanish.
A propos of nothing, I love this English homophone pair meaning opposites. Civil engineers raise a building, and later on (much later), demolition engineers raze it.
At least “soft-pedaled” makes sense, in a way.
Never mind that, buildings burn down by burning up and an alarm clock goes off by going on.
There was also a well-received graphic novel/comic book series called “Marshal Law” some years ago . It was a western-in-outer-space thing, IIRC.
Or that people are supposed to "toe," not "tow" the line.
Or that people write "drivel," not "dribble."
And the difference between "loose" and "lose."
Perhaps they are thinking that racists are rascals, then conflating the two words. Who knows?
Heh, good one. I have never thought of that.
It should be called “Round-tine”
Bob loosed an arrow into the woods. “Did you lose the arrow, Bob?” asked Fred. “Yes, I can’t find it anywhere,” replied Bob. Fred replied, “Well, if you hadn’t loosed the arrow, you wouldn’t have lost it.”
:D
Dribble! That’s one that irritates me as much as the asinine, done to death, not even remotely witty, “cutesy” misspelling of probably as prolly. LOATHE that!
I have the same pet peeve about soft-”pedaling” — also the people who think it has something to do with pipe organs!
Everyone knows it’s spelled “soft-petalling” and goes back to the days of rose parades, with large numbers of people walking over flower petals. Then the practice was adopted at weddings, which led to (I think) the word confusion because the pipe organ would always play softly enough so people could hear whether the bride was delicate enough to walk softly on the petals without disturbing them (and anyway, it is an established fact that no pipe organs used “pedals” until 1973). If she made a noise, they threw flower seeds to signify she had to start over (grow new petals). But flower seeds were expensive, so they started using rice.
It was about this time the Brits were exploring Asia, and tea and rice were a big hit. For some reason the explosion of dog breeding occurred at this time, which is why English cuisine had such a bad reputation for so many years. Most English recipes began with the phrase, “Boil a spaniel until it falls apart, then...” Spaniels were popular in Spain and Porgugal, and were used to make exploding sausages.
Later, the practice was dropped because people thought it was rude to disrupt the ceremony, and it brought bad luck to the marriage (barren wombs, exploding sausages, incest and suchlike). So they waited until the ceremoney was over, and the couple walked out of the church doors. If they didn’t plan to make the reception, they threw the rice and ran away. (This is somehow connected to Hallowe’en.
Another interesting bit of wedding trivia: Brides were supposed to be well rested before their ceremonies so they wouldn’t be too tired that evening to “make the wind and the rain” with their new husbands. So they tooks naps. But sometimes a bride would stupidly take her nap after her hair dressing had taken place. It was pretty obvious when she walked down the aisle with “nappy hair.” Congregants would yell, “Ho!” as a signal to others to check out the bride’s hair. This led to everyone standing during the bridal processional.
Read Blake’s Hiftorie of Language and Ufage, which appeared at fine book stores after the Oxford English Dictionary was published. It was the first “dictionary of phrases.” The large cities banned them, so you had to travel to the furthest districts and outer edges of the country to find them, in mercantiles called Borders Books.
Brilliant man, Blake. He had a theory that everything is connected to everything. I think he was right.
I know. Tow the line is one of my pet peeves. That’s what I meant when I said “they won’t toe the line.”
Very clever! :)
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