Fortune Cookie Translation Contest
Courtesy of Unsplash. By Merritt Thomas @merrittthomas
While living in bi-lingual Montreal, I enjoyed watching hot dogs sold as chiens-chaudes and eating tarte-aux-pommes rather than apple pie. I love the bi-lingual French-English fortunes you get in Chinese fortune cookies: where else but Montreal can you get two different fortunes in one cookie?
I have often wondered how the fortunes get inside the cookies, so I for my Innocents Abroad travel column, I set up a tour of Montreal’s only fortune cookie factory. Then I ran my own bi-lingual fortune writing contest in the Montreal Gazette—with hilarious results.
At the Wing Factory
“ La visite d’un endroit étrange vous apportera du travail nouveau. A visit to a strange place will bring you fresh work. ”
Long silky curtains of soba noodles hang to dry in a dark floury chamber, as still as if in meditation. Stacks of eggroll skins are softer than a baby's cheek - exquisite to touch - but the hot fragrant almond cookies rolling off the conveyor are manna from the gods. (Confucius a dit Manger c'est copuler. Confucius said "to eat is sex.")
But I digress. I have always wanted to visit a Chinese fortune cookie factory, and so I went to Wing's at 1009 Rue Cote, Montreal, Quebec, where eight hours a day, six days a week, 81 biscuits d'horoscope per minute are baked and stuffed with bilingual fortunes, sent to all 330 of Montreal's Chinese restaurants - and also exported to Paris!
Wing's fortune cookie-making machine was hilarious to watch, like something out of a Willy Wonka factory. Manager Peter Wong proudly explained to me that it was a Wong-family invention, and pointed out various stages of the process. Orange batter was syphoned from tubs on the floor into a vat that dribbled a pre-measured squirt onto rotating cupcake-size grills. The baked fortune cookie slid off the grill into a gismo that folded it—as a claw-like device sucked a single paper fortune from a stack and slipped it into the cookie just as the cookie closes.
There were errors, of course. Some fortune cookies got two fortunes and some ended up with none at all, as the hundreds of little fortunepapers littering the floor proved. I wanted to know what these fortunes said, but Mr. Wong explained that there was no list of the hundreds of Wing's fortunes for me to consult. So blushed with embarrassment, I ask the attendant to sweep up the stray fortunes and put them in a bag for me—flour, crumbs and all—so I could read the fortunes.
Quebec government bans English-only fortunes
"Use Your Noodle - Eat Wing's Noodles" used to be the company slogan until Quebec language Bill 101 came in and banished English-only fortunes and required that all fortunes be bilingual French and English. What fun for a translator!
In researching this column, I observed various cookie-related attitudes and rituals. One woman I spoke with will only choose a cookie if it is facing east on the plate. Another friend gobbled a dozen so I could read the contents—but he snapped them open and ripped the papers out without even bothering to read them. Another lad popped whole cookies into his mouth, as if perhaps the fortunes would be revealed to him in a dream.
My methodical study and analysis of the fortunes collected at Wing's has spoiled my fun for eating out at any Montreal Chinese restaurant or Chinese take-away. Here, reproduced exactly, are some of Wong’s choicest examples.
Wong’s Choicest Examples
L'argent est la source de tous les maux. Honey is root of all evils. Votre apparence vous trâhit. Your looks condemn you. Sois modeste. Play it coy baby. Fuyez les embarras legaux. Avoid legal entranglement. La tyrannie est plus féroce que le tigre. Tyranny is fiercier than a tiger. Il faut battre le fer quand il est chaud. Made hay while the sun shines. Le mariage vous apportera le bonheur. You are doomed to be happy in wedlock. Un jour çe sera ton tour. Some day your prince will come. Vos Craintes ne sont pas fondées. Your fears are unfound. La marée n'attend personne. Tide waits for no man. Il est toujours temps pour l'amour. Honeymoon is never over. Une explication est inevitable. A showdown is inevitable. Rien n'est impossible. Nothing is difficult in this world. Ne dispersez pas vos efforts. You reap what you sow. L'extravagance n'as de limites que l'imagination. Extravagance ends in want. L'amour seul peut guerir le mal d'amour. Your lovesick is only love can cure. Ne soyez pas maniaque. Don't be a fuddy duddy.
My own favourite Chinese fortune (not a Wing's creation) has been pressed into my wallet for years: He to whom you pray is nearer to you than the neck of your camel. I hereby invite all who would to submit an appropriate French translation for this fortune. And Peter Wong invites aspiring fortune cookie fortune writers to submit new fortunes (bilingual only) to him c/o Bryan Demchinsky, books editor, The Gazette.
The Wing's fortunes in current circulation were written over a decade ago, so it's time for some new ones. All entries must be enclosed in a cookie. (Naw, jus' kiddin'.) Free bags of cookies to the winners.
The Sequel…
After writing about amusing English-French fortune-cookie translations, I invited readers to send in new fortunes for Wing's Noodles Ltd. Judging by the flood of letters, it seems many Gazette readers are avid fortune-cookie eaters and have just been waiting for the opportunity to show off their talent with bilingual aphorisms. Letters—one was addressed to "The Gazette Fortune Cookie Reviewer"—included seven fortunes on average, and all but one provided French translations.
I doubt if Google Translate can do better now than my human translators. My fortune cookie contest lead me to play around with French Assistant, the English-French translation software produced by MicroTac of San Diego, and the results were hilarious. I thought it would be fun to engage French Assistant to translate our fortune-cookie fortunes from English into French and then compare the results with those of our readers’ submissions. The results below suggest that humans are still much better at translating than machines.
Ann Semple of Montreal proposed: “He who uses chopsticks never speaks with forked tongue," and offers this translation: Celui qui utilise les baguettes ne parle jamais avec une langue en zigzags. The French Assistant translation reads: Il qui emploie baguettes jamais parlent avec fourchette langue.
“A laugh a day keeps angst at bay." Translated: Un rire par jour disperse l'anxiete. French Assistant: Un rire un jour tient angst baie.
French Assistant was a bit rusty “Too much rest makes you rust." Author translation: “Trop de repos et vous rouillerez." French Assistant: Trop fabrications de repos vous rouillez.
Mary Silas of Montreal sent in this peculiar English-only fortune: “Out of all the people in the world, it is an enormous coincidence that you are you." And French Assistant translates it as: "Hors de tout les gens dans le monde, il sont une coincidence norme ce vous êtes vous."
This bilingual fortune came from two 80-year-olds—Doris Schechter and Peggy Knowles of Westmount: “The cleverest doctor cannot save himself." Translated: "Le meilleur docteur ne peut pas se sauver lui-meme." And except for a missing article, French Assistant's version was not bad: “Le docteur plus habile ne peut pas sauver lui-meme."
Harriet Saalheimer of Montreal wrote: “Life needs not only sunshine, but also rain" and translated it as: “La vie a besoin pas seulment du soleil, mais aussi de la pluie." French Assistant proposed: “Besoins de vie pas seul soleil, mais aussi pluie."
From Judith Cowan of Trois Rivieres: “That's the way the cookie crumbles" and “Ainsi s'effrite le biscuit." French Assistant suggested: “Ce le chemin le gateau sec miette."
Luc Bernier of Montreal offered these English translations for his “Quand le tigre a faim, il mange de l'herbe:" “Play second fiddle out of necessity" and, “In times of hardship, be happy to survive." French Assistant's version of the second translation was: “Dans temps de privation, sont heureuse survivre."
Favorite fortune
K. Benoit Evans of Quebec City responded to my invitation to translate my favorite fortune ("He to whom you pray is nearer to you than the neck of your camel") with a translator's insight. Of this aphorism, Evans writes:
“This is a paraphrase of a verse from the Koran and contains an interesting mistranslation. In English, Verse 16 of Chapter 50 reads as follows: `We created man. We know the promptings of his soul, and are closer to him than his jugular vein.' In the original Arabic, the word for jugular vein is `jabl el-warid.' The Arabic word for camel is `jamal.' So `jugular vein' became `camel's neck.' “
Evans adds, “This is minor-league stuff when compared with a gem that recently came across a colleague's desk for revision. Somehow, ‘worked at a spa' had become `a travaillé a la Sociéte Protectricedes Animaux!' “Undaunted by the hazards of my profession, I propose this French version of your fortune: `Dieu ne l'est plus pres de vous que votre veine jugulaire.'“
Dawn Kirk of St. Hyacinthe proposed another translation: “Votre Dieu est plus proche de vous que ne le sont les poils de votre nuque." And French Assistant churned out this one: “Il que vous priez être plus proche vous que le cou de votre chameau."
Roger Moranville of Baie Comeau didn't send in a fortune, but a funny bit found on a book of matches coming from Toronto: “Close before striking" was translated as “Fermer avant frappant." Perhaps the match company consulted French Assistant. When I put the sentence through the program's artificial savoir-faire it came out as: Fermez en avant frapper. Actually, next time you look at a matchbook in Quebec, it will probably say, “Refermez avant d'allumer."
