In an entertaining article in the Washington Post last week by Jane Black she discussed how much spelling and grammar mistakes on restaurant menus bother her. Here’s her fantasy:

I enter a restaurant, order and sweetly ask the waiter if I can “hold on to the menu” during dinner. Then, using a distinctive purple pen, I discreetly copy-edit the descriptions of the dishes.

Caesar, not “caeser.” Shiitake, not “shitake.” Riesling, not “reisling” (though I’d quietly applaud restaurants that spell it wrong as long as the misspelling was consistent.)

Black will be in trouble if she ever comes to Budapest, where the menu mistakes would be way too many to correct with her purple pen. Spelling mistakes on menus is something that has long bothered me also, although in Hungary I excuse the spelling mistakes because the people writing the menus are Hungarian speakers, not native English speakers. (Black excuses ethnic restaurants from her rant as well). In Hungary it’s the often hilarious menu translations which stand out more than the excusable spelling mistakes. One of the most memorable that I have come across was the “chicken make you slobber” at a Chinese restaurant. I assume that the menu writer meant to say something along the lines of “mouthwatering chicken.” And then there is carp, that common Hungarian fish, which I have seen countless times spelled as “crap.” True, many people think that it is, but it’s not a very appealing description.

I generally find these translation mistakes to be entertaining rather than annoying (after all, if I had to translate a menu to Hungarian it wouldn’t be a pretty sight). But I do wonder why it is that so many restaurants here can print their menus (which at traditional places can be very long and often laminated, which is surely expensive) without having someone who speaks English at least read it over. But I guess that is just the copy editor in me.

On the other hand, it does really get to me when menu writers translate “pörkölt” (a typical Hungarian stew) as “goulash” into English. This happens constantly, and it just perpetuates the wrongly-held notion outside of Hungary that goulash (gulyás) is a stew. In Hungary it’s not a stew, but a soup. These menu writers who purposely mis-translate it just add to the confusion. I cannot tell you how many times that I have had discussions with waiters to try to get to the bottom of whether or not the dish listed was actually a soup or a stew. I once ordered a gulyás and received a pörkölt only to have the waiter insist to me that it was goulash. Even the fact that I ordered in Hungarian could not convince him that I knew the difference and that what I wanted was actually the soup, and not the stew. Do restaurateurs think that foreigners cannot understand the difference between the two? Now I have taken to either only using the Hungarian menu, or comparing the English menu to the Hungarian before I order. Maybe Hungary should do what the Chinese government has done and make an official list of suggested translations, even if it is just for these to two oft confused dishes.

–Carolyn