Blind Idiot Translation/Oral Tradition

Anecdotes the People of (Folklore)


 * There's the wonderful urban legend that the advertising slogan "Come alive with the Pepsi Generation!" was mistranslated in China as "Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the dead."
 * Allegedly, the expression "Out of sight, out of mind" was once translated from English to Russian, and then back into English. It became "invisible idiot", which makes sense really.
 * As of October 2009, trying this with the Babel Fish online translator yields the utterly incomprehensible result "From the eyes down, from the heart there."