Mermaids and Fried Wikipedia: the art of translating menu items into English

Traveling in a country where you aren’t super confident with the lingo can be extremely daunting, and simple acts like ordering food become a bit of a nightmare. If you don’t speak the language, you won’t know what foods are on the menu or how they are prepared. Dictionaries, both paper and electronic, are definitely helpful tools when deciphering a menu and many restaurants also try to provide at least some English—one of the most used languages in the world—on their menus.

But sometimes, for all their good intentions, restaurants fail. While this may make ordering lunch a little bit trickier, it is at times like these that we are blessed with some wonderfully bad translated food names.

Today’s special dishes come compliments of restaurants in Taiwan and China that just couldn’t quite find the right words to describe their respective delicacies. Look forward to dishes including mermaids, fried Wikipedia and confused pizzas after the jump.

They always say that if you are visiting China or Taiwan, be sure to lose 10 pounds before you go, because you’ll easily eat that much in delicious food while you’re there. But perhaps if all the menus were translated like these, you’d be able to keep from gaining too much Wikipedia weight.

▼We’re confused by this menu, what’s your excuse, pizza?

▼ Maybe the restaurant is trying to be cute, like “we worked our a$$ off for you to make this” and not, you know…

▼Bullfrog may be a part of this dish, but it’s just cooked in a griddle, so get your mind out of it!

▼Be sure to click through all these fine menu items. Care for any of them?

▼ You probably won’t find any estimated nutritional values for Wikipedia on Wikipedia’s Wikipedia entry.

▼ And finally, the most epic way to translate anything, ever.

If you’re trying to find a way to pique the interest of English-speaking tourists, putting “I can’t find on google but it’s delicious” on the menu might be the perfect way! At this restaurant, if you order their “Google fail”, you’d be eating a stir-fried lotus dish, which probably would be quite delicious. Order it with a side of “Mermaid in Deep sea” (calamari rings) and you’re all set! Curious about what “McDonald’s best friend” might be? That would just be some fried nuggets for your culinary pleasure.

We’d like to say, “Hey, maybe think about consulting an English speaker about these things!” but then where would we get our daily dose of Engrish? A well-balanced meal is important, but so is a hearty dose of laughter and today, and today we got plenty of both!

Top Image: Flickr/Kevin Trotman

Origin: Mermaids and Fried Wikipedia: the art of translating menu items into English
Copyright© RocketNews24 / SOCIO CORPORATION. All rights reserved.

Related Stories

• Crocodile ice cream: It won’t bite back!
• Chinese restaurant has the most epic English menu of all time
• You won’t believe what’s at the end of this 4-hour line
• The only McDonald’s in the world where the golden arches aren’t golden
• The “doya-gao” phenomenon and where you’re most likely to see it

Credit: