Some say that Lao Du cannot “stand a grain of sand in his eye”，which means he can’t tolerate the existence of a single bad Englishsign. Others say that he “loves well and beats soundly”。 In a word，he goes “nit-picking” in Beijing’s streets and has won unanimous appreciationfrom Chinese people and foreigners. One fine example hasa boundless attractive power. There are many people who want to beenlisted in this “nit-picking army”。 Many of his students have joinedhim in this clean-up activity. Some from the States， Singapore， andHong Kong discuss with him standard translations of names of places.
Now， the city has already replaced 6，300 English signs， his contributionto which cannot be left unrecognized. He responds modestly to172 the commendations of the people and the government award： “In fact Iam only your ‘face’。 It should be attributed to many other people whodo the real work； I only accept the reward on your behalf. The applause was especially loud when this foreign face appearedamong Beijing’s “Top Ten Volunteers”。
Translation of Chinese MenusIn addition to the assignments from the Organizing committee，in the past few years Du Dawei has been paying great attention to anotherlong-neglected translation — English menus in restaurants. InChina’s restaurants， there is either no English menu or there is a menuin Chinglish， that is， Chinese-style English. With regard to menu translations，Du Dawei joked： “The variety of translations is greater thanthat of dishes themselves. Lao Du admits that it is a most difficult task to translate Chinesemenus. To more than 31，000 foreign residents in Beijing， the Englishmenu is the “business card” of Chinese cuisine. Actually many ofthem have been attracted to China by its reputation for fine food. Butan unintelligible English menu full of nonsense often renders them at acomplete loss as to what to choose. In some restaurants， “Wanton”， forexample， is translated as “to swallow the clouds”。 Egg drop soup turnsinto “The Sun Rising over Dongting Lake”。 Sliced cold chicken in theSichuan style is named “Slobbering Chicken”。 “Hot Candied SweetPotato” becomes “Wire Pulled Sweet Potato”。 I doubt that foreigndiners would be able to understand the connection between the sweetpotato and wire pulling.
The Chinese cuisine usually embraces a great number of culturalelements. But it is difficult to put it into a foreign language if the nameof a common dish carries too much cultural content. In translatingmenus， it would just be fine to “call a spade a spade”。 Take the eggdrop soup for example. If calling it fried egg in soup is clear to everyone，why call it “The Sun Rising over Dongting Lake？” Even Chinesecustomers are often unable to make head or tails of it before seeingthe soup， let alone foreigners. For some dishes， it is better to use the translations accepted through common practice. It would be excessiveto impose “cultural content” on ordinary dishes. Fortunately Lao Du isworking with the committee to standardize menu translations.
Lao Du showed me a piece of paper bearing the following names：中文标识（Chinese） 错误译法（Wrong Translation）
生鱼块 sashimi （sliced raw fish） Chop the strange fish童子鸡 pullet （spring chicken） Chicken without sexual life驴打滾 soybean cake （sprinkled with soybean meal） Rolling donkey四喜丸子 quadruple-happiness meatballs Four glad meatballsSuch translations make us laugh. It’s really quite a tough job tocorrect such absurdities， because it’s not easy to maintain the Chinesemeaning while also maintaining a correct， concise translation. “TongZi chicken”， which means young hen， can be literally listed as “pullet or “spring chicken”。 As for “Sliced raw fish”， we don’t know howthey came up with “chop” and “strange.” The soybean cake， called“Lü Da Gun” or “Donkey taking a dust bath” in Chinese， is a hard nutto crack. Probably “Si Xi meatballs” is another difficult one， becausethere are so many cultural elements in it and you cannot attach a longexplanation to its English name on a menu.
It seems Lao Du encountered quite a headache in translating “SiXi meatballs”。 When he asked us the meaning of “Si Xi”， I dared notto give him careless answer without first checking the references. Ilooked in a Chinese dictionary and found its meaning. “Si Xi” refersto the four biggest felicities in Chinese people’s lives： refreshing rainafter a long drought； meeting an old friend from a distant land； one’
s wedding night in the red-candle-lit nuptial chamber； and success inan imperial examination. There is so much meaning contained in thefour big meatballs that I couldn’t imagine how Lao Du could choose aproper name for it.
He will have plenty of hard nuts to crack. But Lao Du is so fondof Chinese food that he wouldn’t allow the well-known Chinese cuisineto be ruined by rubbish translations.
174 Advocating the “Ask Me Program Lao Du has proposed an “Ask Me Program” to the Beijing VolunteerAssociation and the Foreign Affairs Office. He has done so becausehe has found that many foreigners in Beijing are not as comfortableas he. Many foreign visitors who don’t speak Chinese will losetheir “sense of direction”。 Almost every time he is out in the streets，he is stopped and asked by a worried foreigner with map in hand and alost look in their eyes， “Can you help me？ “I know some seniors，” he tells me. “They speak rather goodEnglish. An old lady started learning English in 2001， when she was79， and speaks better English than many of my students now. Another，named Jason， is 74 and he works as a volunteer guide in the ForbiddenCity. The oldest person I know hoping to be a volunteer is 84. Manyof the old folks I know in the volunteer program have an English levelhigher than some university students. To be frank， these old folks won’