Comments on: Juice of Jew’s Ear

By: New Atlas

New Atlas — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 14:24:21 +0000

I was really surprised to see this in the grocery store too. I found it in Beijing, and just wrote a review about it. It’s almost a savory drink as you would expect, and it actually tastes pretty good when drank hot.

http://newatlasbev.com/450/juice/jews-ear-juice/

By: McE

McE — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 03:31:38 +0000

I find it odd these days that companies of all sorts put all faith in translation software even when warned by the software maker that its product is designed only to give rough draft translations and not meant to replace a human translator.

More and more people in Hangzhou are speaking good english. Don’t these firms realize they making an ass of themselves when they do not spend the odd few hundred or even few thousand kuai to have their English checked by a qualified translator? Or a native English speaker? Many of these firms hire foreign teachers at great expense to train their staff who go on to learn that their company’s brands and marketing and product literature are hilarious at best and most probably make no sense at all.

An irony.

By: Kevin

Kevin — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 02:13:59 +0000

If you see a strange translation like this in China, the #1 suspect is always a company called Kingsoft. They make a popular translation program that includes a whole load of outdated or bizzarre translations. Sure enough, looking 黑木耳 up on their website (iciba.com) gives you the translation “Jew’s-ear”.

My theory is that they originally had an English-Chinese dictionary, and they just reversed it to get Chinese-English entries, leading to some common Chinese words being translated as something really strange in English.

By: Miss Dolly

Miss Dolly — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 08:12:11 +0000

*heimuer* is kind of food(fungi) in China. It can be cooked, or can be used as medicine. It’s said it has lots of functions, ie cools the blood, Anaemia Treatment, lower the level of blood lipids, Blood Tonic. We are told it’s rich in Protein and Fe(7 times as much Fe as pig’s liver). Oh, it’s for beauty as well(containing Vit. E)!!?? LOL~~~I never believe it. My Translation Software translates heimuer into Jew’s-ear, I found it surprising! Surfed on Google- The name comes from the story that one Jew hanged on a tree, and later people found this tree grew some type of fungus like ears, so…-ridiculous? coincident? Anyway, I think the offical translation is *black fungus*.

Never heard it’s sold as a drink~~~ Wanna give it a go, but, seems there is no Lianhua Surpermarket in my local…Hey, seems they’ve got several taste, original and…HOHO!

Thank you for the lovely review. It was a good fun surfing the info.. Finally learnt the Edible Fungi I have been eating for years, hmmmm. Oh, by the way, I think you guys would find it tastes terrible rather than good, though it tasts okay to me.