Coverage of the Summer Olympics has included television reports of wonderful varieties Chinese cuisine. As the 2008 Games approached the Chinese government took it upon themselves to provide approved translations of menu options on offer in local restaurants.

This, according to an article by the wonderfully named Fuchsia Dunlop (a name I’ll never tire of!) in the Weekend FT.

She lists the literal translations of many Chinese dishes found on restaurant menus:

“Chicken without sexual life” (a young chicken)
“Iron flooring cremation” (cookies baked on an iron griddle)
“Pock-marked old women’s bean curd” (stir-fried tofu in hot sauce)
and “the fragrance explodes the cowboy bone” (no other translation given – my imagination runs wild…)

Lost in translation

At the root of these amusing lists is not some Chinese inability to grasp the basics of English translation. Rather, the lack of congruence between Chinese characters and roman script impedes clear communication:

You can only go so far in borrowing from Chinese because beyond a certain level you have to know the actual Chinese characters to understand precisely what you are talking about. In Sichuanese cuisine, for example, there are two cooking methods that would both be transliterated as kao, but you can’t tell them apart unless you see the actual characters. The different characters for “salty” and “umami” are both rendered in the Roman alphabet as “xian “

The inability of one civilization to render the finer points of its culture into words that would be clearly understood by another is not limited to cuisines. Many social and cultural nuances are lost in translation – business arrangements; educational systems; humor, love, marriage and death. It’s made apparent when we see the literal English used in these menus. Official attempts to provide a standardized alternative are equally limited. Fuchsia Dunlop explains how these are:

…a pale reflection of one of the world’s most marvellous cuisines. Lyrical descriptive terms – like feicui (jadeite) for greenish foods, and guaiwei (strange-flavour, used for an intriguing combination of tastes) have been lost in the translation, and mapo doufu has severed its connection with the lovable pockmarked old dame of Chengdu. As Raymond Zhou wrote in the China Daily, this standardised translation is “a double-edged sword. It removes the ambiguity and unintended humour . . . But it takes away the fun and the rich connotation too. It turns a menu into the equivalent of plain rice, which has the necessary nutrients but is devoid of flavour”.

As with food, so with business. Corporate communications either lose their flavor or suffer unintended mis-translations in the journey from West to East and back. This is all part of the rich tapestry of human life. Give me an exploding cowboy bone any day over the stark accuracy of the standard translation.