The Official Website of the Beijing 2008 Olympic GamesAugust 8-24 2008
(BEIJING, June 18) -- Restaurant menus around the city will begin offering standardized English translations, reported the Jinghua Times.
A guide for translating menus from Chinese into English, edited and published by the Foreign Affairs Office and the Beijing Tourism Administration, was released on Tuesday and will be available to restaurants at the three-star level and above beginning June 20.
The guide includes standardized English translations for more than 2,000 common Chinese dishes, snacks, desserts and beverages. Traditional Chinese specialties like jiaozi take on a Hanyu pinyin spelling, while foods that people outside of China are more familiar with, like tofu, will keep the accepted English spelling.
For main dishes, the guide gives the names of the dishes in Hanyu pinyin, followed by a basic description of what the dish is, e.g., Fotiaoqiang (Steamed Abalone with shark's Fin and Fish Maw).
Although restaurants are encouraged to follow the guidelines to create more customer-friendly menus in time for the Olympics, they will not be required to change their menus.
