Another legacy of the Olympics will be a new ability for foreigners to order a meal in Beijing. Soon most dishes and drinks will have proper English translations.

Beijing Tourism Bureau has released a list of translations for 2,753 dishes and drinks and is waiting for feed-back. The list, once finally fixed, will be used in restaurants across the country.

A team set up by the Beijing Municipal Foreign Affairs Office and Beijing Tourism Bureau has been working on the problem since March last year, backed by a committee of 20 language experts and catering service managers.

Feng Dongming, the head of this translation program and vice dean of Tourism School of Beijing Union University said, ‘The names of Chinese dishes have long been part of our culture. We should translate them in a way that people of other cultures can understand them.’

Translators have divided the dish names into four catalogues: named by materials, by cooking method, by tastes, by name of a person or a place.

Translation of the first type is done simply by linking the the name of each material with a hyphen.

For instance, ‘Mushroom-Duck’s Foot’ and ‘AmentJuice-BalsamPear’, which, we are told, helps foreign guests to recognize the materials and content of the dish.

Except that the writer in his pitiful ignorance has no idea what Ament Juice is although there is a singer in Pearl Jam with the second name of Ament but that may not be the connection.

Nor yet Balsam Pear. Research shows that Balsam Pear is the name for a member of the squash family which resembles a cucumber with bumpy skin. When first picked, it is yellow-green, but as it ripens, it turns to a yellow-orange color.

The second type is translated according to cooking methods. Some Chinese cooking methods are unique and do not exist in other countries, like stew, quick-fry or saute, braise, and chilioil-boil. The translators now put the method in the beginning, followed by the material, forming a verb-noun phrase.

For instance, ‘Stewed Diced Pork and Sweet Potatoes’ and ‘Fish Filets in Hot Chilioil’.
The third type begins with the taste or texture of the food. For example, ‘Crispy Chicken’.

The last type is named after either its creator or the place it originates from. Such examples include ‘MapoTofu’, which is a kind of Tofu invented by Mapo.

The committee also plans to launch a training program to equip waiters and waitresses with knowledge of the dish names in case customers demand explanations. They can start by explaining Ament Juice to one ignorant Westerner.
Source: China Daily