My father has forwarded me this news story about hilarious mistranslated signs used by Royal Caribbean Cruise Line. It appears Royal Caribbean Cruise Line did not verify the Chinese translation's accuracy and blindly trusted Google Translate.

Luckily paper signs can be reprinted, unlike tattoos.


Corned Beef Hash => "salted beef jumbled signal"


Ham and Bamboo Shoot Salad => "clumsy actor and bamboo's salad"


Garden Greens => "[botanical] garden became green color"


Chicken and Mushroom tart => "timid and rapidly grown prostitute(s)"


Regular Milk => "policy milk"
Half & Half => "secondary butter blended mixture"


Green Split Pea Soup => "green separation pea soup"


English Bacon => "English [language] cultivate root"

* Update: several readers have informed me that 培根 is an acceptable transliteration for "bacon" in Taiwan. However, the sign is still incorrect for using "English [language]", instead of "English [cuisine style]".


Creamy Italian Dressing = "butter Italy costume"

Original Story:
中式英文令人啼笑皆非 美国人英译中菜单更搞笑(图)

Language Log:
Timid and Rapidly Grown Prostitutes

Tweet