[Sca-cooks] Beef stock paws or claws!

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Jan 11, 2009, at 1:19 PM, Elaine Koogler wrote:

> I think it's a matter of someone not speaking "the Queen's English"  
> as their
> first language.  It happens in a lot of languages...I don't recall  
> what the
> exact translation meant, but, for example, in Japan, they had to  
> change the
> Japanese version of the English name for Coca Cola as it came out  
> meaning
> something pretty awful.

As I recall, some original ad copy, translated into Japanese, was  
interpreted as "Coke restores life to your dead ancestors." Later,  
when attempts were made to repair this unfortunate colloquial error,  
it allegedly came out as, "Coke bites the wax tadpole." [The original  
in English was "Coke adds life."]

I'm not sure I believe the second part, but it's a commonly repeated  
tale.

And then, of course, there were stories of the mysteriously low sales  
numbers for the Chevrolet Nova automobile throughout the Spanish- 
speaking world. While, technically, it does sort of sound like "Chevy  
doesn't go", I find it hard to accept the idea that this is the first  
thing anybody who thinks in Spanish, which is derived from Latin,  
thinks when they hear that.

>  Another example is reading the English version of
> how to use chopsticks as found on the chopstick wrappers you get in  
> Chinese
> restaurants!  And...I know for sure that, if you pronounce the  
> Chinese word
> for mother the wrong way, with the wrong inflection (in pin-yin  
> Mandarin),

And I might point out that Mandarin has fewer tones than most Chinese  
dialects.

Adamantius






"Most men worry about their own bellies, and other people's souls,  
when we all ought to worry about our own souls, and other people's  
bellies."
			-- Rabbi Israel Salanter