Offering to translate menu, how much to ask? How to solicit?

Basically, there is a great dumpling shop right in the patch where many tourists like to pass by. There is no English menu. The foreigners who were taken there really enjoyed the food and the price.

Should one make a nice bilingual version of the menu with a bilingual sign that says “English Menu Here!” walk up to the restaurant owner and present it to him in a portfolio notebook? How much could be asked, 500?
What is the best way one may go about soliciting such jobs. Should it be just done as a service?

Now this is an interesting one

I have done that for free for my neighborhood noodle and dumpling place, because they also get a lot of tourists. Since I go there frequently, my “profit” so far has been free soup, extra big portions, and a lot of good will.

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yeah, I would just ask them if they’d like a translation for free. Not like it’s going to take you more than 10 minutes. I’m sure you’ll end up getting payment in dumplings.

I’d avoid using dumpling as much as possible. I favor shuijiao over water dumplings. Or maybe put the English in brackets. Tangbao are tangbao the world over, only loosers say “soup dumplings”.

Then you would have the problem of using Hanyu Pinyin or Tongyong

No you wouldn’t. Only an assclown would use tongyong.

TBH, in Spanish I cannot write tangbao. I have to use a description. “Soup filled dumplings” would be more like shao long bao.

I had a bit of a backlash when calling zongzhu “Taiwanese style tamales”, but when the food is so exotic, you need something native as a frame of reference. We know tamales as a mass filled with meat and other ingredients and wrapped in leaves. That is basically how you would describe a zongzhu. Dumpling in English seems to me an accepted and acceptable compromise that most people are familiar with.

I find translating the names of the different kind of noodles quite a task. The names would mean nothing to a foreigner who sees them for the first time, and listing the ingredients would not help much as they basically are all broth, pork, bean sprots or cabbage, some spring onions and not much else. Tangzu mien or tza zhang mien? Dry or in soup? Thin or thick noodles? A newbie would ask: is that important/relevant?

Actually, I find menu translating very challenging. We have lots of fun here with that, as we have lots of misunderstandings between Spanish from Spain, Spanish from Latin America, and the variations between Latin American countries lexicon.

For example, a pal used to tell a joke about translating “arrollado vegetariano”. For me, that is a flour tortilla filled with vegetables. For a Spanish guy, it would be an uinfortunate vegan who had a close encounter with a scooter or blue truck and was run over.

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yeah its a minefield. I personally hate descriptions like “Taiwan-style pizza” or “oyster vermicelli” or “Taiwanese ravioli”. Italian terms should apply to Italian cuisine. Colloquially of course you can say glass noodles are similar to vermicelli. I guess it has to be case by case. But where there’s no near-equivalence 100% just use the pinyin. 滷味 should be luwei, its just confusing to use terms like “braised” to describe it, it doesn’t help you understand it. Better just point at the stuff and say “LU WEI”. The meaning will fix itself after you sample some.

Yeah, but if you’re trying to explain the menu item to someone who doesn’t speak Chineeze, 滷味 don’t really cut the cheese.
Pretty stupid to make an “English menu” listing Tong Bao and San Bei Ji, isn’t it?

While in The Kingdom of the Bear, you’re certainly entitled to deliver edicts like “If they don’t speak Chinese, they can figgin STARVE!!”, Mr Buddy Noodle Boss Man probably ain’t so fussy, being perfectly happy to take anyone’s NTzers.

Anthony friggin Bourdain calls them “soup dumplings”.
Are you going to sit there and say you know better than Tony Bo???
Well are you, Mr. Big Shot???

I didn’t think so.

How dare you, how very dare you.

Ban all furriners from Chinese restaurants unless they can read the menu in Chinese. Its the only way forward.

Yeah but as a workaround write Tangbao (aka soup dumplings). Sanbeiji (aka 3-cups Chicken)

So put in all the dumb translations in brackets but try and steer the ignoramus to use the “Chinese” name.

OK, that’s better, but let’s just ditch the friggin Romanisation (shouldn’t this be the word for turning someone into a gypsy??), and have a bleeding English menu, but…they only get to use it the first month they come in, after that, they either learn, or go friggin hungry!
That way Uncle Noodle gets to fleece the FNGs of all their hard-earned Buxi Bucks AND we can still maintain some bloody standards around here.

Pointing and mimicking work very well -well sort of- in real life, but most of the stuff I translate is for videos and brochures, where unfortunately no one has taken up my suggestion of making it a sort of scratch and sniff to get the whole experience.

Not to mention we dela with the “high officials” and other differnet from us people who only take champagne and caviar, Heaven forbid sample Taiwanese food, even if they know what it is, least of all if you put stuff in the description which makes it look less appetizing.

Well, it’s not just a dumpling shop. Sorry. More of a noodle shop with dumplings. Only one kind of dumplings too.
I’d basically take their menu sheet, try to translate all their noodle/dumpling choices Put the English words next to or under the Chinese words then perhaps add lines separating the items and give each item a number.
So the foreigner can just say number one or just point to the bilingual listing.
In our family and general area, we call these things “Dumplings” in english. But when I went back home, I found them in Costco listed as Potstickers. Potstickers? What kind of translation is that? Why, because they stick to the pot?

It’s a literal translation of 鍋貼, innit.

Jesus, can of worms well and truly opened.

I use potstickers for the fried kind. They do stick together. Dumplings for the water/steamed ones.

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