| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9] > | Off topic: What is the funniest mistake you have come across when proofreading? Thread poster: Paul Dixon
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'hot dogs' was translated with 'heiße Hunde'. Gave me a good laugh at midnight!
| | | | | Very long shoe laces | Jun 24, 2009 |
Clarisa Moraña wrote:
- Su hija está embarazada, y es por mi culpa- he said to the astonished parents. (Your daugther is pregnant, and that's my fault). In fact, he wanted to say: "She is embarrased".
This reminds me of one my sister-in-law's early shopping days when she had just arrived to Spain and her command of Spanish was not that good (she speaks an outstanding Spanish today). The laces ("cordones") of some boots were broken and she went to this ancient string and rope shop in Guadalajara (does not exist today unfortunately) and she asked:
- "Necesito unos CONDONES muuuy largos." (Please, I need looong condoms!)
Not an editing typo either, but I thought you'd enjoy the story the same way my sister-in-law and all of us enjoy it every now and then. We never get tired of hearing it.
| | | | Lingua 5B 
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Local time: 22:30
Member (2009)
English to Croatian
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Tomás Cano Binder, CT wrote: Clarisa Moraña wrote:
- Su hija está embarazada, y es por mi culpa- he said to the astonished parents. (Your daugther is pregnant, and that's my fault). In fact, he wanted to say: "She is embarrased". This reminds me of one my sister-in-law's early shopping days when she had just arrived to Spain and her command of Spanish was not that good (she speaks an outstanding Spanish today). The laces ("cordones") of some boots were broken and she went to this ancient string and rope shop in Guadalajara (does not exist today unfortunately) and she asked: - "Necesito unos CONDONES muuuy largos." (Please, I need looong condoms!) Not an editing typo either, but I thought you'd enjoy the story the same way my sister-in-law and all of us enjoy it every now and then. We never get tired of hearing it.
Ha ha ha, funny indeed.
There was this Indian guy who spoke bad English while I worked at UN. One of his common mistakes was that he kept saying " yourselves" instead of " yourself" for singular. For example, he'd say to somebody " you should look after yourselves".. one time, an English colleague responded to this with:
" I don't think there is more than one "self" here unless I have developed schizophrenia"
| | | | trad500
Local time: 21:30
English to French
| In subtitles | Jun 24, 2009 |
I was doing a QC on a movie subtitles... the translator obviously hadn't bothered watching the video.
Amongst my favourites in that single film:
"Mayday, Mayday" as a plane was crashing, translated as "Mai 68, Mai 68" (May 68 or the student uprising in France)
"Sweat factory" translated "usine a sueur" - ie, a very literal translation... not very tempting...
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Laurent KRAULAND (X)
France
Local time: 22:30
French to German
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| Revolutionary thoughts? | Jun 24, 2009 |
Marie Leca wrote:
"Mayday, Mayday" as a plane was crashing, translated as "Mai 68, Mai 68" (May 68 or the student uprising in France)
"Sweat factory" translated "usine a sueur" - ie, a very literal translation... not very tempting...
This happens when one puts too much of personal thoughts into a translation.
Laurent
[Edited at 2009-06-24 16:32 GMT]
| | | | Tom Ellett (X)
United Kingdom
Local time: 21:30
Norwegian to English
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| The funniest mistake I've come across... | Jul 8, 2009 |
...would have to be this, from a Swedish tourist brochure "translated" into English:
"At the beginning of the 16th century a rifle company was built to supply the Swedish Airforce."
Wow! Technologically advanced, those medieval Swedes Needless to say, the text had to be retranslated from scratch.
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A ball was translated as a bol (means a 'syllable' in Gujarati), this transformed a psychological test into an unimaginable mess...rather an etiology instead of a diagnosis
| | | | Bee Vang
United States
Local time: 15:30
English to Hmong
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| Classic case of "you get what you pay for" | Jul 16, 2009 |
A translator wrote, "yawning is a good thing during playtime" and the text was actually, "yarn is good item for playtime". This translator probably didn't know enough to differentiate yarn from yawn.
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| Well, not from a text, but in a shop - still funny though! | Jul 16, 2009 |
A well-known fruit and veg chain in Rio de Janeiro has the following product (among other gems - I really must take photos!!):
"blond in powder" (louro em pó - ground bayleaf or bayleaf powder).
This had me laughing for ages...
| | | | Lingua 5B
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Local time: 22:30
Member (2009)
English to Croatian
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| tazdog (X)
Spain
Local time: 22:30
Spanish to English
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| on farting ghosts... | Jul 17, 2009 |
Michele Johnson wrote: Of course it's from the German "In xxxx atmen wir den Geist Goethes", meaning xxxx is characterized by the spirit of Goethe, but literally: In xxx we breathe the ghost of Goethe. In fact I didn't even know the meaning of the actual German phrase, so I wondered how it would be to breathe the ghost of Goethe. I figured it smelled like old farts, and that's become the inadvertent metaphor for farting in our house: "Hey, is that the ghost of Goethe I detect?"
This one made me laugh out loud. Thanks for sharing it, Michele!
| | | | Claudia Mi
Local time: 22:30
English to Italian
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Karen Stokes wrote:
I once "proofread" a menu featuring a fine range of fish dishes including a "pavé de loup" (bass) translated as a "thick wolf roast".
I must say we've always found nice intelligent wolves to be much tastier...
Best,
Karen
Me too! I'm proofreading a text and I've just found "pavé de loup" = "tender wolf steak"...
best wishes
Claudia
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| Very interesting word ( and bird ) :) | Nov 24, 2011 |
The poultry bird Meleagris in English is turkey, in Turkish it is called hindi (from India) and in Brazilian Portuguese it is peru. I wonder which words are used for this bird in India and Peru
[Edited at 2011-11-24 14:15 GMT]
| | | | | What a mess! | Nov 24, 2011 |
TurkishEnglishTranslator.com "Бёcäטsع Լîfe's cômplicåtعd eñøugh" wrote: José Henrique Lamensdorf wrote:
The poultry bird Meleagris in English is turkey, in Turkish it is called hindi (from India) and in Brazilian Portuguese it is peru. I wonder which words are used for this bird in India and Peru
No way!
I wrote...
José Henrique Lamensdorf wrote:
In Portuguese (Brazilian - accents omitted on account of some systems):
Turkey (the country) = Turquia
turkey (the bird) = peru
Peru (the country) = Peru
peru (teens' slang) = the male sexual organ
(something/someone is...) do peru! (slang) = very good, very bad, or very inconvenient - depending on context
The female (bird), "perua" has its troubles too.
It may mean the bird itself, but also a station-wagon, a van, VW Kombi, etc.
However in slang it may mean a bizarrely overdressed-for-the-occasion woman, with excessive make-up, flamboyant.
Invent your jokes!
My knowledge of Turkish is not sufficient to wet a teaspoon, much less to fill one. All I know is that it uses a lot of Ç, though I don't even know if it should sound like SS, as in PT and FR.
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No way! I wrote... José Henrique Lamensdorf wrote:
In Portuguese (Brazilian - accents omitted on account of some systems):
My knowledge of Turkish is not sufficient to wet a teaspoon, much less to fill one. All I know is that it uses a lot of Ç, though I don't even know if it should sound like SS, as in PT and FR.
I corrected the mistake
ç sounds like ch in chair
ş sh of shoe
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