Authorities fry hard to fix Korean menus lost in translation
Beef bone soup
By Ko Dong-hwan
Beef tartare
Authorities are cracking down on the widespread mistranslation of Korean restaurant menus into English that not only confound foreigners but embarrass some Koreans.
The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism said Wednesday it had formed a task force with the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs to tackle the issue.
With the help of the National Institute of Korean Language, the Korean Food Foundation, food experts and native English, Chinese and Japanese speakers, the team will standardize the foreign names of Korean foods.
Rep. Yeom Dong-yeol of the Saenuri Party revealed late last year that among 274 restaurants in Seoul with Korean-food menus in Chinese, a third had “seriously wrong” translations.
Pollack stew
Errors in English translations shocked the public years ago.
“Bear tang” and “Six times,” which should have been “Beef bone soup” and “Beef tartare,” were among the most controversial examples.
“Noodle soup,” “Pork-on-the-bone soup with potatoes” and “Glass noodles with sautéed vegetables” are being translated in many eateries as “Knife-cut noodle,” “Potato soup” and “Clear noodle pasta.” Some more ludicrous errors translated “Pollack stew” as “Dynamic stew,” and “Stir-fried chicken gizzard” as “Chicken asshole house.”
Korean restaurant menus in English show mistranslations of pollack stew as "dynamic stew" and beef tartare as "six times."
The errors mostly occur because translators use computer-guided tools like Google Translation, which often translates word-to-word, not word-to-meaning.
The team will update the database of Korean food translations on the Korea Tourism Organization homepage and launch a site with the correct names. It will also tell those in the printing industry that design the menus the correct translations.
So far, 200 Korean foods have official foreign names and about 3,700 have unofficial but understandable foreign names.