Standing in line at Subway over lunch, looking forward to my veggie sub, I noticed that Subway now offers a Chicken Cordon Bleu sub. It dawned on me how odd it is that we translate certain things the way we do.
Chicken Cordon Bleu implies a chicken breast stuffed with ham and cheese.
We translate the chicken portion, but leave the other portion untranslated. Why?
Because it means diddly squat relative to what it implies.
Is Chicken Blue String less appetizing? Of course. Does it make any sense either way? No.
Should we consider Poulet Cordon Bleu? No one in this country would order it.
Even better would be Coq Cordon Bleu. That's simple perversion. There are probably whole websites devoted to that already.
4 comments:
Reminds me of Terre Haute's "Champaign Velvet" we drank last weekend.
Or "Casino Royale."
Seems like, in every instance, Americans are willing to accept fancy Frenchie-sounding dress-ups of names, as long as there's a good ol' English word in there that refers to exactly what you're talking about.
My guess is that you'll find the greatest number of these instances in culture (places, things) used or frequented by the lower middle classes. Things like fast food. Names of corporations in soap operas. That sort of thing.
These folks are refined enough to understand the value of "the import," yet not quite worldy enough to actually know the first thing of anything orinating from outside our borders.
I think that society should rewrite blue as blew or bloo.
If society doesn't spell something phoenetically, odds-on are that Cory Levendusky will sooner or later, anyway.
Whether he means to or not.
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