Exterminate Capitalism Lobster Package.

Tiny Dish of Chef's Sincerity.

"'Tiny Dish of Chef's Sincerity' I can sort of understand, but 'Exterminate Capitalism Lobster Package'??" I agree with Ben that the second part is intelligible enough, but how do you get from Tāotiè lóngxiā cān 饕餮龙虾餐 to "Exterminate Capitalism Lobster Package"? The answer is that there is no way you can get from there to here. Fair enough, lóngxiā means "lobster," and cān in this case signifies a complete meal, i.e., a "package." But Tāotiè is the name of an ancient mythological monster (often translated as "glutton"). Since Tāotiè is a bisyllabic morpheme (neither tāo nor tiè means anything by itself [there are plenty of such bisyllabic morphemes in Old Sinitic]), it is absolutely impossible to break Tāotiè down into anything that might mean "Exterminate Capitalism." Therefore, my conclusion is that somebody was playing around with whomever was responsible for preparing this menu and mischievously provided an absurd translation, perhaps with the intention of poking fun at the Chinese Communist system which has given rise to such luxurious and fancy dining practices as reflected in pretentious menus of this sort.

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