Humor: Seductive Tasty Pleasure in Santorini

Not great.
Today's post is just for fun, because life is short and it's good to laugh, even if the translations/slogans are scary. The picture on the left is a photo of a flyer that we received from a restaurant in Santorini, Greece. In spite of the fact that this restaurant is abusing the English language a bit, we ate there anyway, and we are happy to report that there's nothing fishy about this restaurant.
But the place is great indeed.

By reading the ad, one might think this place is adults-only, but no: it's a lovely , family-friendly place by the beach. We spent a fantastic afternoon there and had some tasty fish, appetizers, gyros, light white wine, and went swimming in the crystal-clear waters of the Mediterranean. Our day in Santorini was one of the many highlights of our recent Greek vacation, for which we are incredibly grateful. And we also collected lots of fun examples of Greeklish! OK, we just made that up. It is hard to tell if these masterpieces are translations from Greek or German or just simply poor writing by folks who probably shouldn't be doing any writing in English (especially not if 'it's printed by the thousands). We bet it's the latter, but we will never know. 

Sometimes you just have to take it all with a grain of salt, forget about language, and focus on enjoying an epic meal. And we are here to tell you that the talented folks at Atmosphere do know how to cook!

Happy Wednesday!


2 comments:

Zoya Nayshtut on October 3, 2013 at 4:29 AM said...

Judy and Dagmar, thank you for a fun post. It actually reminded me of some restaurants here in Russia offering things like "herring under fur", "sausage in father-in-law", "climbing with hen", etc. that puzzle and/or frighten visitors who do not know Russian. Several years ago when I worked inhouse, a couple of our expats shared there experience at a restaurant that had a menu in English. They made the waiter really nervous because it took them about an hour to enjoy reading the menu and laughing at it. Then they were not sure what they had ordered until they were served. They said the food was good though and they came back but I think that it was the menu that made their day.

Judy Jenner and Dagmar Jenner on October 3, 2013 at 11:06 AM said...

@Zoya: Oh, that's a priceless story, thanks so much for sharing! There's no doubt that English-language menus in other countries can provide endless entertainment, but then again, kudos to the restaurants for trying.... Thanks for reading and for commenting.

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The entrepreneurial linguists and translating twins blog about the business of translation from Las Vegas and Vienna.

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