Norwegian Olympic team tries to order 1,500 eggs. Because of a translation error, they get 15,000

9 February 2018

Chefs from the Norwegian team ended up with 15,000 eggs instead of the requested 1,500, thanks to a scrambled order.

The chefs needed the eggs to feed Norwegian athletes at the Winter Olympics in South Korea.

So the chefs put in an order for them with a local supermarket, using Google Translate. But they clearly made an error somewhere.

The mistake apparently came courtesy of Google Translate, which the cooks used to fill out their ingredient list. Somehow, their request for 1,500 eggs was lost in translation, and the chefs received 10 times what they wanted.

Every one of the 109 Norwegian athletes would have to eat more than seven eggs each day of the Olympics to use up the supply.

Speaking to the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten, chef Stale Johansen said his team “received half a truckload of eggs.” There was “no end to the delivery,” he said. It was “absolutely unbelievable.”

Fortunately for the chefs, the supermarket took back 13,500 eggs.

Chef Stale Johansen explained the difficulties when trying to cater for 109 athletes during the competition.

He said: “The biggest challenge is that we will be serving food almost round the clock”.

“We have both skiers and biathlon here, so there will be food from half past seven in the morning and until almost 2am at night. I know what they like and what they don’t like”.