Articles and Stories

March 13, 2013

Some of the jokes and pranks I remember the most from all the ones flying around the Internet, happen to be the ones I received in e-mails when I first set up an account. Whether I remember them because it was my first experience with the World Wide Web or because those were genuinely funny, they seemed to have gotten fossilized in my memory and made an impression forever.

One such e-mail was a copy I received of a menu from a Galician restaurant in northern Spain that had gone through a translation attempt. It seemed more of a description of a movie night party (“Wines from the River Ha and the Valley of Rocks”) with suspicious dishes straight out of a nightmare (“One mug of bleeding”) and to top it all, in company of an oddly eclectic audience (“Female Jews with Thief”). 

Judging by the excruciating English text, whoever did the translation must have both had a very basic level of English as well as a limited ability to properly use the dictionary. Either the person responsible for the translation chose whatever first translated equivalent appeared in a list of multiple possibilities, or they were bored trying to pull someone’s leg using a rather creepy sense of humor.

Translation is an art and checking a dictionary alone is insufficient to make a comprehensive and useful piece. Whatever the intention of the restaurant, such literal translation obviously defeated the purpose of letting English speaking customers know what the menu consisted of, however entertaining or scary, reading the menu might have been to them.

If the owner of the restaurant had been anyone seeking our advice, we would have warned him/her of the risk of not investing in a proper translation by a qualified expert. Typically, a one-page document such as this would have cost a one-time minimum fee, with the invaluable return for the business owner of portraying a professional image by giving evidence of good service and a caring approach towards the need of their foreign customers.

Either way, the restaurant decided to take a different route and we are thankful for being able to get a kick out of this anecdote. I must add, too, that we are thankful to find inspiration in this menu to make our next Halloween party macabre yet amusing. Please see the menu below (if you were able at all to guess what the below menu items were meant to be without the original name next to them, either you are from Spain, lived there for a good while, or you simply have divination/clairvoyant powers):

La casa gallega 
Spanish Covers (tapas) 

 FOODIDRINK SPECIALITIES

Octopus To The Party (Pulpo a feria)
Courageous Potatoes (Patatas bravas)
Huge Hair Spray With Grelos (Lacón con grelos)
Canes & Little Ones (Cañas y chiquitos)
Drink from the Boot and the big Joint (Beba en bota y en porrón)
Thin Uncle Joseph (Fino Tío Pepe) & Thin Fifth (Fino Quinta)
They wíll pash from Navarra (Pacharán de Navarra)
Wines from the River Ha and the Valley of Rocks
(Vinos de Rioja y Valdepeñas)

TODAY’S MENU

Female Jews with Thief (Judías con chorizo)
Pretty to the Iron (Bonito a la Plancha)

SPECIAL OPENING PROMOTION

One mug of bleeding if you buy a Little Joseph of Veal
(Una Jarra de sangría al pedir un Pepito de Ternera)