An investigation into the use of menus and billboards in sapa town, Lao Cai

as that of spelling errors. 
In terms of heterogeneous translationerrors, 
there are with the figure of 70 errors accounted 
for roughly 12.3% of the total. 
Table 1. Total errors in menus and billboards 
in Sapa 
Errors Number Frequency 
Spelling errors 259 45.52% 
Not Parallelerrors 20 3.51% 
Heterogeneous 
translationerrors 
70 12.3% 
Grammatical errors 220 38.66% 
Total 569 100% 
Secondly, table 2 shows the errors’ data of 20 
restaurants and 1 spa. The authors also 
divided these mistakes into 4 main groups in 
order to have an overview as well as compare 
each one with others. There are 511 errors in 
total. The rate of spelling errors is highest, at 
226 mistakes accounted for approximately 
44.23%, which are over seventeen times as 
high as that of not parallel errors, just 13 
errors with roughly 2.54% of the total, 
whereas heterogeneous translation errors are 
with 69 errors, only about 3 times lower than 
that of spelling ones, just 13.5%. The last one 
is grammatical errors slightly lower 
percentage of spelling errors, at 203 errors 
accounted for around 39.73%. 
Vu Dinh Bac et al TNU Journal of Science and Technology 199(06): 73 - 78 
 Email: jst@tnu.edu.vn 76 
Table 2. Total errors in menus in Sapa 
Errors Number Frequency 
Spelling errors 226 44.23% 
Not Parallel errors 13 2.54% 
Heterogeneous 
translation errors 
69 13.5% 
Grammatical errors 203 39.73% 
Total 511 100% 
In addition, in 569 errors, the authors also 
separated the errors of 45 billboards for 
analyzing. Spelling errors, not parallel errors, 
heterogeneous translation and grammatical 
errors with the figure is 33, 7, 1 and 17 
respectively. According to table 3, the rate of 
errors among 4 groups has relatively large 
difference. Going into details, the proportion 
of both heterogeneous translation errors and 
not parallel errors was a mere, only around 
1.72% and 12.07%, respectively. The highest 
rate of errors is spelling errors, which 
accounted for over a half of the total, are 
56.9%, followed by grammartical errors with 
the figure are 29.31%. 
Table 3. Total errors in billboards in Sapa 
Errors Number Frequency 
Spelling errors 33 56.9% 
Not Parallel errors 7 12.07% 
Heterogeneous 
translation errors 
1 1.72% 
Grammatical errors 17 29.31% 
Total 58 100% 
Table 4. Some typical restaurants having mistakes 
in menus 
Restaurant 
Number of 
mistakes 
Frequency 
H’mong BBQ 77 15.1% 
Fansipan 52 10.2% 
Bar - restaurant 3 0.6% 
The rest 
restaurants 
379 74.1% 
Total 511 100% 
As shown in table 4, in 21 restaurants and spa, 
H’mong BBQ restaurant’s menu has the 
highest errors of 77 mistakes accounted for 
approximately 15.1%, followed by Fansipan 
restaurant with the figure being lower, at 52 
errors accounted for around 10.2%. The errors 
in Bar – restaurant’s menu is the lowest, at 
only 3 mistakes with roughly 0.6% of the total. 
When analyzing errors in groups, it was found 
that the restaurants had the most errors in 
spelling errors, with 226 errors. In it, the 
menu of H’mong BBQ restaurant has the 
most spelling errors: 33 errors. The menu of 
Phuoc Lan and Viet restaurants has the 
second highest number of errors with 26 
errors about spelling. Behind the spelling 
error groups, the grammar error group has all 
203 errors. The menu of the H’mong BBQ 
restaurant still has the most grammatical 
errors with 41 errors Error groups with 
heterogeneous translation has 69 errors. 
Fansipan restaurant has the most errors and 
their menu has 10 errors. The error groups with 
not parallel only has 13 errors. Of those 13, 
Sky restaurant has 6 errors, another restaurant 
has 1-2 errors, and some restaurants do not 
make mistakes in this error group. 
In terms of grammatical errors, there are 
several different kinds of mistakes, for 
instance the locals can not distinguish which 
nouns are countable or uncountable (meats, 
salads, breads, wines, ...). Next, they make 
errors on word order, in fact some words are 
reversed their positions (fried rice Duong 
Chau, corn fried, pork spinning,pork stir-
fried, cucumber young, beef stir fried,). 
Besides, a number of phrases not only have 
no accompanying preposition but also are 
used in erroneous way (Hot pot vegetable 
Sapa mushroom, fried rice vegetable, steamed 
chicken lemon leaves, steam rice, mix fruit, 
mix salad, sauted mix vegetables, ). 
Moreover, the locals are mistaken between 
plural nouns and singular nouns (2 person, 3 
or more person, two egg, ). Furthermore, 
they use wrong grammatical structures, 
sentences do not have verbs or the verbs are 
nouns used as verbs (sour and sweet pork 
Vu Dinh Bac et al TNU Journal of Science and Technology 199(06): 73 - 78 
 Email: jst@tnu.edu.vn 77 
chops, “A very refreshing, easy drinking 
champagne style pale straw in color, showing 
an attractive, lifted her baceousness on the 
nose and fresh fruit flavours, finishing clean 
with delicate, creamy mouth feel and a crisp 
finish. The perfect wine for any celebration, 
slightly drier the dB Classique”, you choice 
one of the types of fried rice or noodle, ). 
Besides, spelling errors are also divided into 
three main groups: wrong words (fist, coffe, 
sweer and sour, foof, bufflo, passiion, 
mustrrooms, cappucino, chesee, stawberry, 
eeg, galic,pinaple ), devided or combined 
words by space (sand wiches, water melon, 
lemon grass, choco late, sea food, pine apple 
juice, milk shake, hotpot, Aglass), the authors 
have to identify these words by checking 
dictionary, pictures or search the Internet. 
In addition, principle error of not parallel is 
unbalanced between plural nouns and singular 
nouns (fried rice with eggs and vegetable, mix 
fruit/seasonal fruits, chicken/sandwiches/Club 
sandwich, bacon/eggs/onion/mushroom/olive, 
fried rice with vegetable/fried noodles with 
vegetables, ). 
In heterogeneous translation errors, they do 
not have equivalent meaning between English 
and Vietnamese (egg: trứng vịt lộn, egg: 
trứng nướng, bitter melon: mướp đắng nhồi 
thịt, sauted Sapa mushroom with pork: thịt 
xào hành nấm Sapa, boiled vegetable: ngồng 
xu hào luộc, boild chayote: quả su su hấp 
vừng, orange with milk: sinh tố cam, ...). 
Moreover, there are several other errors like: 
writing miscellaneous capital letters (sapa), 
using a half English and a half Vietnamese 
(Ba con, xà lách, cà chua, dưa chuột 
Mayonaise sauce, cheese. Therefore, 
foreigners misunderstand the ingredients 
having in the dishes. 
In order to have more information about the 
current state of English used in menus and 
billboards in Sapa, the authors interviewed 
one shop owner and six foreigners. The shop 
owner said that her restaurant’s menu was 
based on other restaurants’ menus or 
translated by Google Translation. Besides, the 
authors begged foreigners for commenting on 
English used in menus and billboards they 
saw. The result was these foreigners said that 
they could understand the content of menus 
and billboards by general way; nevertheless, 
they sometimes did not understand 
completely what were the meaning of some 
English words. Particulaly, the authors 
showed foreigners some pictures of 
restaurants’ menus and billboards, they found 
down many errors related to spelling and 
grammar of these. This problem affects more 
or less to owners’ business. 
There are a lot of previous researches studied 
about English used in menus and billboards; 
however, no researches carried out this field 
in Sapa; therefore, this study will contribute 
extra document for menus and billboards in 
Vietnam. Furthermore, it can be used as 
reference not only for Sapa but also for other 
tourist attractions. 
5. Conclusion 
This research bases from many menus and 
billboards in Sapa which still have many 
errors. From the collected data, there are 569 
mistakes in 21 restaurants, one spa and 45 
billboards. Especially, spelling errors account 
for approximately 45.52%. Not parallel are 
the lowest errors at only about 20 errors 
related making up 3.15%. The result of this 
issue is that foreigners sometimes can not 
understand completely the meaning of some 
English words. The researchers found that 
English language have a significant effect on 
customers intention in Sapa. Therefore, the 
study proposes a guidebook affected 
customers’ purchase intention, which no 
previous researches have done before. The 
restauranteurs can base on this English 
guidebook to correct all mistakes in their 
menus and billboards or design high quality 
ones easily. 
Vu Dinh Bac et al TNU Journal of Science and Technology 199(06): 73 - 78 
 Email: jst@tnu.edu.vn 78 
Base on the results of this study, it is hoped 
that the guidebook will be applied in most of 
restaurants and spa in Sapa. This product 
improves menus and billboards’ quality with 
the hope of bettering service’s quality. This 
research also wants to help restauranteurs 
avoid some common errors while using 
English in menus and billboards. This study 
was conducted in Sapa but it is hoped that it 
will be useful for other tourist attractions in 
Vietnam. 
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