Translation Woes

Living in American Samoa has a few language related issues. The vast majority of the residents conduct their daily lives speaking Samoan. It's similar to other Polynesian languages like Hawaiian and Tongan, but decidedly difficult for us native English speakers. The long strings of vowels and guttural breaks are tough for me to mouth and with only 14 letters, it involves many repetitions of sounds.

English is the next most spoken language. It's the language of government, but most Samoans are not as comfortable using it. Thus it is less favored for day-in and day-out use.

There is a larger community of Chinese, Korean and Filipino immigrants than palagi in American Samoa. The members of these communities tend to be small business owners and run a number of stores and restaurants. They usually use their native tongues amongst themselves and learn varying amounts of English and Samoan for dealing with the general public. This somewhat-familiarity with English sometimes crops up in odd translations. A few recent menus from local restaurants demonstrates this. These things tend not to get corrected as both the menu translators and the majority of the patrons are not native English speakers.

Thus we're left to contemplate about dishes like "Slip the Meat Section," "Pot Package of Meat," "Fried Eggplant Box" and "Coke Chicken." There are numerous other examples of literal translations being taken into the absurd. I'll try to catch photos of them when I come across the ones that are worth sharing. Until then, I leave with the description of Coke Chicken:

"Coke Chicken stewed juice in the original basis plus iced coke with small fire boil chicken in all allows you to enjoy the chickeand also, can feel the coke."