Spartacus = Super Taka?

Here’s a restaurant on Fuzhou Road (福州路) in Shanghai:

Spartacus = Super Taka??

So the Chinese name is 斯巴达克斯牛排, which includes a straightforward transliteration of the name “Spartacus,” which you can easily find on Baidu Baike and on Chinese Wikipedia, plus the word for “steak.” But somehow the English name of this restaurant is “Super Taka Steak.”

How does that work? I’d love to hear theories.

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John Pasden

John is a Shanghai-based linguist and entrepreneur, founder of AllSet Learning.

Comments

  1. Super – Tak – Asteak
    Spar – Tac – Usteak

  2. Maybe they just didn’t know that 斯巴達克斯 means Spartacus, or they just wanted to state additionally that they serve steaks. I don’t think that they wanted to play with the translation.

  3. sinosplicefan Says: October 22, 2014 at 5:18 pm

    super taka .. must be the japanese name
    for the restaurant lol
    sounds japanese !! lol

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