Selected Translation Tidbits

from Le Royal Tour Restaurant menu by the Eiffel Tower, 23 Avenue La Bourdonnais, 75007 Paris, France, +33 1 45 51 38 04

All entries are absolutely true – heck you couldn’t make this up – i.e. the first line is the French, the second was the restaurant’s translation, the third in brackets is a helpful, cultural interpretation (all right, perhaps they were my comments).

Tartare d’avocat et crevettes sauce cocktail

     Lawyer Tartar, shrimps sauce cocktail

          (kinda makes you want to turn cannibal)

Salade Estivale (Mesclun de salade, saumon fumé, avocat, pâtes, vinaigre de xérès

Salad, smoked salmon, lawyer, warp ends, vinegar of Jerez

(bit ends? warp speed? it’s lawyers Jim, but not as we know ‘em)

 

Salade frisée aux lardons et oeuf poche

Salad with lardoons and poached egg

(we don’ take to lardoons round these here parts…)

 

Croustillant au chèvre chaud sur lit de salade

Crusty with the goat heat on salad

(well, without any bucks, what do you expect?)

L’entrecôte du boucher

Sirloin fashin, garnish and sauce with the choice

(if Billy’s off the menu, this must be in fash)

 

Côte de boeuf au four pour deux personnes

     Coast of boeuf for two people

          (no gastronomic girly-men these Frenchies; an entire coast)

 

Trio de côtes d’agneau grillés garniture au choix

Roasted coasts of lamb garnish to the choice

(continental drift is verging on extinction)

 

Escalope de dinde à la normande, spaghetti

Poultry scallop with spaghetti

(and you thought genetically-modified was safe?)

 

And our all-time favourite:

Viande de boeuf fraîchement hachée avec machine réfrigérée à la commande

Beef codly chopped has the order with cooled machine

(a chilling view of the future as slave human chefs wield frozen fish carcasses to splinter beef under the domination of cryogenically-refrigerated computers)

Professor Michael Mainelli on location in Paris … taking diplomacy lessons from Jed Babbin, Deputy Undersecretary of Defense from the first Bush administration on 30 January 2003 – “… you know frankly, going to war without France is like going deer hunting without an accordion.  You just leave a lot of useless noisy baggage behind.”