服務生

[Kenny同志]

I am not sure if it has any equivalent in English. To the best of my knowledge, it can be a waiter/waitress in a restaurant, hotel, night club, or pub, but it also can be someone who serves people in a KTV bar, 洗浴店, or 按摩店.

 

Can I call a 服務生 in the second set of places an attendant?

 

 

[aone]

服务员 is a common USEAGE.  To be moderate, call them 美女 or 帅哥。

[Kenny同志]

Thanks 阿旺.

 

To be honest, I am not really a fan of such frivolous terms as 美女 or 帥哥.

 

In fact, I was looking for a translation for 服務生. Since you mentioned 服務員, which is not entirely the same thing as 服務生, I am also interested to know what it is called in English.

[Lu]

This is one of those words that Chinese has one word for but in English you have to be specific. Can be a hostess/host, attendant, waiter/waitress, etc, depending on where they do their 服务-ing.

[aone]

Things change, Kenny. 美女 or 帥哥 were frivolous (輕佻) , not as that 轻佻 nowadays.

 

小姐 Miss (e.g. 千金小姐) once was a positive word to describe an elegant lady, but now? Dare you trying to call the 服务生"小姐" ?She will definitely pour her disgust towards you if conditions allow， “你才是小姐！你们全家都是小姐！” is all that she wants to shout out. Because It is equivalent to prostitute.

[skylee]

阿旺！真缺德！

I agree with the OP's comment on 美女 and 帥哥. But people of different background feel differently about such terms.

[Kenny同志]

Thanks for your input, Lu. It's very useful.

 

阿旺:

 

I am the kind of old-fashioned guy who can't handle such terms. To be fair, 美女 and 帥哥 may be acceptable in an average restaurant but if you are in a fancy one, you'd better avoid using them or you will be committing a faux pas.

 

I still use 小姐 as a common way of addressing various kinds of female 服務員 and I can tell you they even include those working in hotels and massage parlours. None of them has ever shouted out at me.

[roddy]

Yawn. Let me guess, nobody says 同志 either...

 

It's a trivial matter to find multiple uses of 小姐 in non-prostitutal* contexts. see?. 

 

*made-up word

[Kenny同志]

 Let me guess, nobody says 同志 either...

 

I do. However, off the forums, I use it to address those CCP guys only. Last time when I was in our local 辦證大廳, I called the lady from the PSB 同志.

[oceancalligraphy]

If I needed a single term for 服務生 to encompass all the meanings, I would use attendant, or something like service attendant, or service crew.

服務員 vs. 服務生 and the above 小姐 discussion reminds me of this

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cQJSquy8x9w

[MPhillips]

For workers in a bath-house I'd use attendant; at a massage parlor, the people doing the actually massaging are masseurs (m.) & masseuses (f.), most of the rest of the staff would probably be called attendants. If they give beauty treatments (i.e. facials) at such places the people who perform such treatments call themselves "estheticians". However those who man the front desk are called front desk clerks. BTW, bath-houses & massage parlors have such a bad reputation here that now they generally call themselves "spas" (the only place I've seen traditional, above-board bath-houses in the US is the Russian section of NY). I'm not sure how KTV bars work though.

[MPhillips]

If you want to get fancy, you can call a front desk clerk a receptionist; also, in the US masseurs have a governing body which holds exams, if you pass you get to be called a "massage therapist"--I imagine such people would be offended to be called simple "masseurs" & "masseuses".

[Kenny同志]

服務員 vs. 服務生 and the above 小姐 discussion reminds me of this

 

 

 

The whole thing is a bit exaggerated. I use 服務員 only in cheap restaurants.

 

BTW, bath-houses & massage parlors have such a bad reputation here that now they generally call themselves "spas"

 

Thanks for the information, 菲麗.

 

I am just a bit curious. Do bath-houses and massage (馬殺雞  ) parlours in NY have a bad reputation because of sex services, just like those in China?

 

PS: When I first heard HKers say 馬殺雞 as a transliteration of "massage", I was really amused.

[MPhillips]

To be perfectly honest if you say "bath-house" to an American, the first thing he will probably think of is a gay hang-out (might be best to avoid the word altogether in speech if you want to avoid a weird reaction); the term massage parlor probably has the very same connotation here that 按摩店 has in China.

[daofeishi]

In English you usually have to be specific 

 

Restaurant: waiter/waitress, maître d' (at fancy restaurants, the person at the front of the restaurant who greets guests/assigns tables), sommelier (also just at upscale restaurants, the waiter responsible for serving wine)     

Hotel: Clerk or receptionist (front desk), bellhop (the guy who carries your luggage), waiter (room service), valet (person who parks your car), concierge (personal services) 

Night clubs, bars, pubs: waiter/waitress/server, bartender  

Massage parlors and spas: masseur/masseuse/massage therapist 

 

However, most places you can get away by just referring to people as staff, which would be the most general classification of all these people. 

[MPhillips]

In the interests of encyclopedic completeness, in a restaurant the fellow who takes the dirty dishes away is called a "busboy", a female bartender is a "barmaid", while the people who work at Starbuck's call themselves "baristas".

[daofeishi]

the people who work at Starbuck's call themselves "baristas". 

 

I call them liberal arts majors   *

 

* Don't shoot me, I'm one too 

[MPhillips]

Yes, I used to swap books for free coffee there--what Mr. Starbuck doesn't know won't hurt him!

[Kenny同志]

Thanks again for your very informative posts, 菲麗 and 稻飛虱. : )

[tysond]

I hear a lot of 美女 and 帅哥 in Beijing these days, especially in bars/cafes.

I still hear plenty of 服务员 with plenty of erhua in restaurants.

 

I have never once heard a 小姐 since I lived in Singapore.