Lost in Translation

My posts about our recent vacation will not necessarily go up in a linear fashion as far as date goes. Some things I'm just going to post as they come to me. Like this little goodie!

In most touristy places like Greece and Italy, restaurant menus are usually written in English, French, German as well as the native language. As a native Greek speaker I'm always interested to see how certain things get translated. I like to do this with subtitled tv shows too.

Anyway, my wife and my mother and I were dining at a quaint little seaside taverna in Mitilini (see picture above)- which is the main town on the isle of Lesvos, Greece. Yes, that Lesvos. Along the harbor there are several restaurants which serve fresh seafood, grilled stuff made to order (tis oras) as well as usually a rotating selection of more complex baked items (magirefta). That's the standard model for Greek restaurants. This menu was packed with items over like 8 pages, all with fairly small print and set up almost like an excel spreadsheet. Needless to say, I had to review the menu very closely. Now normally I would be looking only at the Greek menu but since my wife doesn't speak Greek, I tend to look at the English menu with her more often than not.

Well, as we were perusing the long list of delicacies my eye came across an unusual listing. I sat there looking at it, taking it all in and then asked my wife and mom if theirs said the same thing. Much to our shock, it was. Clearly written in all caps. It read "FAGGOTS IN RED SAUSE". (Here's a picture if you dont believe me!)



Never mind the shock of what it said, what could this possibly be a translation of?!? I'm feverishly flipping back and forth from the Greek to the English to make sure I had the right item, all the while my wife in tears laughing and my mother positively horrified and planning how to point out the inequity to the proprietor. I looked and looked and then there it was. A dish with Ottoman roots called Souzoukakia. Souzoukakia are sort of elongated meatballs cooked in the oven in a kind of cumin flavored red tomato sauce with potatoes. The "...IN RED SAUSE" part they got right spelling aside, but not quite sure how they came up with the other part.

By studying the menu it's quite obvious that there are several other errors and misspellings, but none quite so perplexing. When the server woman finally came back to take our order, my mom pointed it out whispering (in Greek) [excuse me, uh, there seems to be some sort of an error here. Somehow whoever translated your menus for you wrote "faggots in red sauce" for souzoukakia. Not only does that not make sense, but they said "faggots" not "homosexuals in red sauce", which is really rude. I think someone's played a prank on you!]

If anyone has any clue how this may have occurred, please let me and your local GBLT group know.