Thursday, June 7, 2007

Lost in translation

I was reading an article on how the chinese are trying to translate the names of the foods on their menu from chinese to English in preparation for the Olympic games...which I hope the world would boycott if they don't rein in Omar al-Bashir of sudan, but dat na tory for anoda day. Some of the english translations came out really funny....."ants climbing the tree", "It is small to fry the chicken miscellaneous" ..and the most hilarious was "mixed elbow with garlic mud" . It was so funny as I tried to picture the face of a foreigner in china, who asks for the menu and the first meal is "mixed elbow (or elbows if you ask for two plates) with garlic mud"...very fresh and extra spicy available !!! .lol..But then...I paused to think.What happens when Nigeria hosts something...not the Olympic games sha, since we neva reach dat level yet, unless Bar beach over flows again, then we can host the rowing event, with all the canoes where we get!!..lol....anyway, back to my gist...how do we translate various Nigerian meals from their native names to english; and we have a lot of them...but we dey chop food for niger sha... So I decided to make a list and translate a few I could remember.

Isi-ewu -------- Goat head with the eyes and its teeth grinning before death !! Frightening !!
Nkwobi -------- Ummh, this is difficult .....No idea !! I do need help on this.
Ikpan Kwu Kwu------No idea !!!
Amala ------ No english name, cannot be found in the dictionary
Eba -------- converted from garri.
Garri ------ Obtained from Cassava.
Cassava ----- Ummh., how the hell do you explain this ?
Fura -------- No idea.
Afang -------
Edi Kai Kong -----
404 -------- You're probably better off not knowing...grilled meat..lol

My conclusion, you would need to carry out an extensive research to solve this jigsaw..lol... Yo, but let me know if you have any ethnic dishes, from any part of the world with very very outrageous english translations!!! Peace out !!!

2 comments:

Chxta said...

Isi ewu is just goat head.

...and if I'm not mistaken, nkwobi is a grinding stone...

Ozymandias said...

@chxta: Lol..i think the complete description of the goat head is necessary to prevent any surprises..and Nkwobi, I have no idea...prolly "to cut" i guess...ummmh, but then how do you eat a stone..lol