It's all Greeklish to me

I recently had a look at some sites documenting the use of 'Chinglish', i.e. Chinese-influenced (often incorrectly) written English. The similarity to the term 'Greeklish' immediately came to mind. However, the term Greeklish refers to writing Greek using the Latin alphabet and, therefore, does not imply badly spelled or otherwise misused English. Tourists have been flocking to Greece for the past fifty years or so, and as the sign says, we do speak English. Nevertheless, if one considers the abuse of written and spoken English in tourist areas in Greece, then the above claim becomes quite dubious.

A classic example is the translation of menus in restaurants. The picture to the right gives a classic example. Octopus is misspelled as 'octapus', squid is both mistranslated and misspelled as 'cattlefish', and in both cases the 'translator' uses Greek syntax in English. The use of the word 'vinegar' after 'octapus' and 'cattlefish' implies that 'octapus' and 'cattlefish' are two different brands or variants of vinegar. The translation should be 'Octopus in vinegar', 'Squid in vinegar', and for the red peppers it's Florina not florina. The next one is even more hilarious. I cannot see the Greek text but from the translation it seems that you can order things such as 'Garbage salad' (really?), 'Beetroots' (note the plural), 'Greens' (Cécile Duflot salad?) or 'Brokolo' and 'Politiki' salad (can't be bothered to translate brokolo to broccoli).

The best, however, comes when the locals are trying to 'spice' things up a bit. British tourists are often known for going on drinking and sex sprees when on holiday. It is not unusual then to see bars offering all sorts of things that sound, at least, dodgy (see the photo on the right).

Last, but not least, there are the awesome translations of road signs. 'Holy Monastery of Our Lady of the Door'. Surprisingly, the translation is correct, but who cares?
The best remain simply transliterated: 'Grias kolos beach' is really 'The Old Lady's Ass Beach'. It does not really matter what you translate as long as you smile, as one sign advised the locals, 'it helps tourism'.