Funny translations of Spanish menus that will make you laugh
Instead of hiring professional translators, some businesses rely on Google Translate to translate their menus. The results are either catastrophic or just mediocre, but we can’t deny that these mistranslations can be really fun and entertaining. In the following lines, we will go over some silly translations of Spanish menus and enjoy a bit of translated nonsense.
A “boquerón” is a European anchovy, but clearly, the translation machine failed to grasp that. Or perhaps it believed that this dish of boquerones en vinagre will open a series of interdimensional portals and wormholes to another galaxy and devour the client. Either way, the machine decided it was reasonable to say “big holes in vinegar”, and if you order this dish in English, you risk getting a plate with holes leaking vinegar. The best part is, this isn’t even the most insane mistranslation on the list.
Google Translate is a beer person. | Source: @CKD_Haven on Twitter
Don’t be fooled by this picture: Google Translate knows exactly what wine is, but has a preference for beer. This is why it avoids translating the word “vino” correctly at all costs, and goes for the verb “come” instead. The results are quite creative, actually. Here, “vino en botella”, which means “a bottle of wine” in Spanish, becomes “he/she came in bottle”. But who came in a bottle? And why? Who knows!
Another creative wine. | Source: @DemigranteNews on Twitter
This translated menu seems to enjoy cinema. “Helado”, which is the Spanish word for ice cream, becomes the popular Disney movie Frozen. Let it go, right? But there is more. “Vino de la tierra” means local wine, but English-speaking people will have to order a “he came from the earth” instead, which sounds kind of science-fictiony. Is he a zombie crawling out of his tomb to enjoy a nice glass of wine? A mythological creature emerging from the woods for the first time, perhaps? An earthling travelling across outer space? The possibilities here are endless.
Your favourite cannibal dessert. | Source: @Strambotic on Twitter
In Spanish, “judía” might refer to either beans or Jewish women. Can you guess which meaning the translator chose? Well, it makes sense that a machine would have issues understanding context, and this is a clear example of that. According to this questionable translation, the main ingredient of this Spanish ice cream is… Jewish? Jewish women, maybe? It would be slightly concerning if someone who did not speak Spanish ordered this sweet. I would not want to be near that person, that’s for sure, since it could be the cannibal zombie who came from the earth.
Up above the world you fly, like a bacon in the sky. | Source: @Strambotic on Twitter
Oh, the classic literal, word-for-word translations that have destroyed the lives of so many translators worldwide… Sometimes, their meaning lies so far away from the original text that one must embark on a long journey to find them. This is the case of this tocino de cielo, a traditional Spanish dessert made of egg yolk and sugar. Clearly, Google Translate has never tried this sweet treat. Instead, it found it reasonable to translate it as “bacon of sky”; the most logical line of thought, right? Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s bacon of sky!
The milk shall inform. | Source: @mabeltradu on Twitter
We will end up the ride with this mistranslation, which does not really belong to a menu, but it is just as surreal as the others. This sign reveals the true intentions of the milk. “Leche entera” is literally whole milk, but that translation would simply be too boring. Instead, we get “milk informs”, which is not even a word-for-word translation, but who cares at this point. The important question here is, what does the milk want to tell us? Which secrets does it hide? The comment of the Twitter user who shared the picture is also amusing: “After standing there for 10 minutes waiting for some information, I got bored and left”.
