Went to a small reunion dinner the other night at a Chinese restaurant in Chinatown. Going through the menu, I came across a dish that had, for one of its ingredients, “dry winds meat”.
Some 15 years ago, I’d gone for a Chinese meal with Pam and Jackie. Pam was totally baffled by one of the ingredients and asked, “What is ‘minced wind’?!?”. My eyes moved on to the next line: ah, if she’d read on, she would’ve seen that it was “minced wind dried meat”.
Note: Wind-dried meat (风干肉 / 風乾肉 fēng gān ròu / “wind dry meat”), in Chinese cooking, is meat that’s marinaded, then left to dry in the wind, suspended from a hook, just like cured meat such as sausages in the West.
(London)
A comma would have made a lot of difference:
ReplyDeleteminced, wind
dried meat
is harder to misinterpret...
Yes, it would've, indeed, Valerio, but speed reading often results in errors (as you can see from my blog "Speed reading on a speedy train"), so a comma might not have registered in such a case. Also, people (both the setter/writer and the reader) are not always meticulous about such things as punctuation. And don't forget, this was from a Chinese restaurant menu --
Deletewe've seen, over the years, the hilarious howlers from the English translations of Chinese signs and other source material. What puzzles me is why, in the 21st century when they have more contact with Westerners, they don't seek help. A Dutch chap who'd published a small book of photos of such howlers suggested a few theories: (i) arrogance -- they think their English is fine; (ii) face -- they'll lose face by asking outsiders (i.e., non-Chinese) for help, or if they have a colleague who knows some English, they don't want that colleague to lose face. I agree with him, and think it's both.