Comments on: Not pork but bacon

By: Ingrid Piller

Ingrid Piller — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 08:40:42 +0000

LOL!!! Thanks for sharing, Prince of Persia!

By: Prince of Persia

Prince of Persia — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 08:32:31 +0000

I had the opposite experience. Once I took a group of Chinese clients who were on a business trip to a Chinese restaurant in Sydney. As they were the “experts” in Chinese cuisine, my guests ordered the food. When we got the meal on a beautiful round communal spinning table, I quietly said to one of the waiters “Excuse me, I have a problem.” Before I could go on, he started to apologize profusely and yelled at other waiters in Chinese and there was a big rush and they took half of the dishes away from the table and brought new ones instead. It was all very confusing and I asked them what they were doing. They apologized again and said they had removed all the pork dishes because I was a Muslim. As a matter of fact, I may look like one but I am not and so I told them that my problem wasn’t the pork but the fact that I don’t know how to eat with chopsticks. Everyone laughed ……..

By: xiaoxiao

xiaoxiao — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 15:27:24 +0000

Thanks, Ingrid. This reminds me of the naming of some Chinese food in English which can be confusing to both Chinese people and native English speakers. One typical example is that dumpling is used to refer to both “饺子” (“Jiaozi,” which consists of ground meat and/or vegetable or egg filling wrapped into a thinly crimped piece of dough) and “汤圆” or “元宵” (“Tangyuan” or “Yuanxiao,” which is made of glutinous rice flour ball with or without fillings). People who have seen dumpling, Jiaozi and Tangyuan or Yuanxiao know very well that they are far from each other. Of course, this is more a case of mistranslation, but wouldn’t it cause the same confusion as seen in “Not pork but bacon”?

By: Mahmoud

Mahmoud — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 22:52:35 +0000

Interesting! I had a similar experience! one day i went to a restaurant in Sydney. In the food menu it is written that “100% Halal food” which is simply means that (No pork). However, one of the meals according to the menu contains bacon! So, i told to one of the waiters: the menu is confusing, how do you sale bacon and claim that your food is 100% Halal. He smiled and told me that ‘we use beef bacon’!