Language Log

Among the visual jokes coming out of Russia on the occasion of the Sochi Olympics are some intriguing menu items:

Sing! King! Wa! Ta! Sing! King! Wa! Ta!

The words were being hastily shouted down a phone, with loud sounds of wind and waves in the background, and the emergency call center operator could make no sense of them. Attempts at conversing with the caller failed; he seemed not to understand English. Yet the tone was unmistakably urgent: someone was in danger of his life. But who? And where?

About 23 people died in the event that led to that desperate, unintelligible phone call. It happed in 2004, ten years ago today. My vagueness about the number of victims is because no one who knew all the facts wanted to talk about the circumstances (the skull of one victim was only found in 2010).

An anonymous correspondent sent in this photograph of a food package from New Taipei City, Taiwan:

Michael Rank sent me the following photograph:

Bruce Balden sent in this photograph of a sign on a restaurant in the Vancouver area:

Stephan Stiller says that my post on "Good good study; day day up" reminds him of "people mountain, people sea" (rénshānrénhǎi 人山人海), i.e., "crowded; packed; a sea of people".  This is another fairly complex Chinglishism that has entered the vocabulary of many English speakers who know no Chinese.  It was popularized by a Hong Kong music production company that took this expression as its name, and there was also a Hong Kong film that used this expression as its title.

Sreekar Saha sent in this sign and expressed puzzlement over the English translation:

Somebody gave a friend of Rose Hill this coin purse as a gift:

Michael Robinson recently went to an interesting Toronto restaurant called Ten Mile Aroma, whose menu can be found online here.  Micheal's attention was drawn to these two menu items:

137. Fried Spicy Chicken Framework (làchǎo jījià 辣炒鸡架)
138. Chicken Racks with Soya Sauce (jiàng jījià 酱鸡架)

According to Michael, a reviewer who visited the restaurant commented that he asked about the Chicken Framework and got the reply "Just bones, no meat".  Michael says he's sure that he saw someone order one of these, and they brought a plate of chicken bones over to him.

Neither from the Chinese term itself nor from the English translations (both on the menu and online) is it very self-evident just what is at issue here.  Why would anyone want to order a plateful of chicken bones?

Arnold Zwicky kindly called the following choice Chinglish label to my attention:

Wicky Tse and Cheng Fangyi both sent me this photograph taken in a bookstore located in the central business district of Xinjiekou, Nanjing, China:

It is not just the disaster of Chinese-English translation that provides us with source material for the huge fund of hilariously inappropriate texts that we tag with Lost in Translation here on Language Log. Spanish provides them too. And here is one from Italian. What could possibly be the explanation for a failure as gross as translating RIFUGIO ("refuge") by the words "MOUNTAIN DEW"? What did they mean to put? Coca-Cola? Dr. Pepper?

It seems almost a shame to solve the mystery, yet I believe I can. And just as when one explains a conjuring trick, it's a total let-down. But this is Language Log: we aim to inform, not just to titillate. Not that there's anything wrong with that—in a well-balanced life there should be some titillation as well. If you would prefer titillation to information right now, try to work out the source of the error for yourself before you read on.

Bob Ramsey sent in the following photograph of a portion of a Chinese restaurant menu (source; originally from engrish.com):