(OT) Re:Why english is important

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Wed, Jan 10, 2007 at 09:58:18PM -0500, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
> Sorry, the timing of this thread was just too good.
> 
> This past weekend, I was shopping for Calrose (short grain) rice, the
> kind used for sushi making.
> 
> At the T&T Asian supermarket in Promenade Mall, I purchased an 8kg bag
> of Tiger King brand rice. Not only was it inexpensive, but the colorful
> use of language in its description won me over (transcribed verbatim,
> including caps and punctuation):
> 
> > "The TIGER KING Northeast Rice, the source directs from Japan; becomes
> > the high quality paddy rice variety after the improvement cultivation
> > and rich in beautifully to the Chinese northeast.
> >
> > TIGER KING Northeast Rice, pellet plentiful full, the cream color is
> > even, bright and clean like jade, crystal clear bright. And highly
> > cleanly guarantees the quality to be pure, does not contain the
> > impurity; Does not use rinse, then the direct watering puts into the
> > pot cooks a meal boils. After makes the rice, pure white glossy, the
> > feeling in the mouth fragrant soft is mellow, the delicate fragrance
> > whets the appetite. Besides normal edible, suits for the Japanese
> > sushi and South Korea mixes the food."
> 
> You don't want to see the French translation; "TIGER KING Northeast
> Rice" becomes "le riz du nord-est de TIGRE ROL".
> 
> BTW, Tiger King Group, according to the only address on the bag, is
> located in Markham.

Hmm, that almost sounds like the commentators you hear on iron chef.
The japanese seem to have amazing abilities to describe food in terms of
texture and flavour and other characteristics, which seem to be hard to
translate since most people in english speaking countries don't really
think much about food in that level of detail.

My wife got a set of mahjong tiles for xmas (I believe from her brother)
and the instructions in english are about as comprehensible as that rice
description.  The french instructions look much more sane (although I
can't read them), so hopefully my wife can figure out the rules from
that and translate for me. :)

> PS: I highly recommend a trip to one of Toronto's T&T supermarkets; this
> ain't no Loblaws.

But they are so amazingly crowded whenever I go there. :)

--
Len Sorensen
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists