Blind Idiot Translation/Real Life: Difference between revisions
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*** For instance, the classical ''To be or not to be, that is the question'', after a English-Japanese-Chinese-French-German-Italian-Spanish-English trip, becomes
{{quote|Due to the regulations due to it stops as they give under him is not: The needs of the argument}}
* One of the first websites to deal with this phenomenon, particularly as applied to hilarious usages of English in Asian countries, is [
* Need I remind you guys that WE WILL BURY YOUUUU!!!!!!!{{context}}<!-- MOD: Yes, you do need to. What's this from? -->
* The FA's translator for when Fabio Capello first became England Manager!
* An advertisement
* The German translation for a small toy fishtank with plastic fish: "Lebensunterhalt aus direkter Sonne leuchtet". Just retranslating this to English in the most literal of ways gives you "Keep out of direct sun light", which is probably the phrase it was originally translated from. But in this case they picked the German words representing the words secondary meaning or literal translation: The translation for Keep used here is the German word for the keep you earn... They also translated light as "leuchtet" (light up/glow), even splitting up sunlight into two words and literally translating each of them.
** It says "sustenance out of direct sun illuminates."
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* [https://web.archive.org/web/20131104015120/http://www.rahoi.com/2006/03/may-i-take-your-order What happens when a Chinese restaurant fails their translation.]
** According to [http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005195.html this blog entry], "Most of us, however, have all along suspected that this phenomenon resulted from reliance on faulty translation software. Indeed, it is easy to prove that absurd English translations are being spewed out daily in China when individuals who don't know English merely plug Chinese sentences into the software and expect it to come up with reasonable renditions." A bug in one particular translation program has caused the word "fuck" to appear on shop signs and restaurant menus, etc.
** [[Even Evil Has Standards|The government of China]] has [http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/06/19/olympic.dishes/index.html released an official list of food name translations] in the hope of stopping this problem for the Olympics. (It also appears that [https://web.archive.org/web/20120902042721/http://www.for68.com/new/2008/6/li8655365544181680024816-0.htm the list is online], in Chinese.)
** That didn't stop a restaurant owner from putting up a sign that called his establishment "[http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/then-well-grab-bite-404-not-found-15632 Translate Server Error]".
** Many [[Blind Idiot Translation
* "Yesterday not throw the fire inside the battery". Literally, "never throw the battery in a fire". Or worse: "The Ni-MH battery absolutely not can throw in the fire inside, the battery suffers the heat will take place the bang."
* Sign in a Swiss ski hotel (as recorded by Richard Lederer): "Not to perambulate the corridors in the hours of repose in the boots of ascension." Mr. Lederer also records a Kyushu, Japan detour sign reading "Stop: Drive Sideways."
* A negligent translation to Russian and back allowed Margaret Thatcher's nickname to shift from 'Iron Maiden' (as in 'torture-box') to 'Iron Dame' to 'Iron Lady'. An improvement, no?
** This became the linguistic version of an [[Ascended Glitch]]; that nickname certainly stuck.
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** It is not really gibberish as an intention. The very limited number of pictograms supplied can be used to make a proper generic banner that makes sense.
* Some of the most glorious Chinese-to-English examples ever recorded could be found on Anime Jump's (the website has stopped updating, and Mike Toole now works for [[Anime News Network]]) Bootleg Toys Showcase. The Flying Headless Goku is a meme in itself.
** Speaking of bad Chinese-to-English translations, has anyone read those red chopstick packets available at most Chinese restaurants? (Although most of these packets have been recently{{When}} revised to display better English, you can still find a few badly translated ones here and there.)
** The mentioned site contains what is probably one of the best (read: worst) Blind Idiot Translations ever: [http://www.animejump.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=26&page=1 the INTERTLLR TERININATDR] (also called Apolay Wayyioy).
* Lots of this sort of thing can be found at [http://www.rinkworks.com/said Rinkworks.com]
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** Some versions of this anecdote add a line instructing the driver as to the correct course of action should the driver's passage be obstacled by a horse: "wait for him to [[Never Say "Die"|pass away]]."
* Another example involved [[Tony Blair]] giving a speech in French about the "third way" falling foul of the fact that the literal French translation of "third way" (''troisième voie'') is more often used in conversational French to refer to Platform Three at a railway station.
* [[John F. Kennedy]] supposedly did this in his "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech, where Berliner can refer to a type of pastry, but the belief that this was a mistake [https://web.archive.org/web/20130514015154/http://urbanlegends.about.com/cs/historical/a/jfk_berliner.htm is an urban legend].
** So is, of course, the idea that a native of Berlin would be unable to distinguish between himself and a pastry. At any rate, the presence of the article doesn't really make that much of a difference in this case. The speech is very clear in what Kennedy meant to say.
** Since this kind of pastry is known in many parts of Germany as "Berliner", but not in Berlin itself, where it is called "Pfannkuchen", there is no way the citizens of Berlin could have misinterpreted the meaning.
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** The Chinese word does mean literally "propaganda board", as there is no negative connotation associated with the word "propaganda" in China.
* In a translation of a hymn about John the Revelator, who wrote the Book of The Seven Seals, 'seal' was translated using the 'aquatic pinniped mammal' meaning.
* Mark Lemon records in ''The Jest Book'' that Alderman Wood, who had been Lord Mayor of London but no longer was, went to Paris in 1815 and had his visiting cards printed to say "Alderman Wood, ''feu Lord Maire de Londres'', having translated "late", not to the French for "previously" or something similar, but to the French for "dead."
** Translated into Norwegian with that meaning: "De Sju Selers Bok". Translated back into English in the same manner: "The Seven Harnesses' Book". It could also be read as "The Seven Seals' Book", as in "aquatic mammal".
* Polish translators in general seem to be baffled by slang, for example translating the word "[[Totally Radical|radical]]" to the Polish equivalent "radykalny" which, needless to say, is not and has never been a slang word. This makes the translated dialogue sound [[Sophisticated As Hell|oddly disjointed]] or plain [[They Just Didn't Care|incomprehensible]].
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** The Dutch copy of Trackmania has a dialog button "Dichtbij", which means "Close", as in a short distance away.
** And in the Dutch version of iTunes, where in a file's information you can type in the name of a show, it translates "Show" as "Tonen", as in making something seen.
**
** The first release of the Dutch version of Windows Mobile 5 was full of these. One memorable example was the Solitaire game had a button labeled "Tekenen", which is "Draw" as in "Draw a picture" rather than "Draw a card". It was clearly a case of translating the resource tables without looking at the application. Not to mention the numerous made-up and inconsistent abbreviations that WM5 was riddled with to make the (typically longer than their English equivalent) Dutch terms fit. To top it off, many of the naming of various items was also inconsistent with the Dutch version of the regular Windows (for example, Windows on PC translates "My Documents" into "Mijn Documenten" but left "Program Files" alone, while WM5 did the opposite, changing "Program Files" to "Programmabestanden" but leaving "My Documents" inexplicably in English).
* The Brazilian Portuguese translation of Windows Vista had 'Sobre o Janelas', which means... 'About [the] Windows'. Sadly, it was fixed.
* Students of the Latin Language, once they have gotten to the point where they can begin to piece together reasonably correct sentences, graduate from [[Translation Train Wreck]] to this normally partway through their second year. With improper and incomplete knowledge of grammatical structures, the results are often more or less fine in English, but rather atrocious in Latin. For example, the sentence: Since I feel that I am not afraid of the kind of man who would pet a kitten, is correctly written as Cum sentio ut vereor homi qui palparet cattulam. Without knowledge of subjunctive, cum clauses, and characteristic clauses, such a student would write: Quoniam non timeor gentis viri quem sit tactet felecem. Unfortunately, this means: "Since (as in time) not afraid I am of the race of man whom he would be touches cat."
* ''[[Top Gear]]''{{'}}s Jeremy Clarkson and James May explored the workings of the world's first automobiles and were very confused by an instruction sheet translated from French. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bvk5U4RUGs&feature=related See here starting at 3:09]
* French Example: [https://web.archive.org/web/20120630040930/http://www.imperatif-francais.org/bienvenu/images/stories/articles/5516-08.jpg This] packaging for a snow shovel, which translates "snow pusher" to "revendeur de drogue de neige", uses the wrong sense of the word "pusher." Instead of "an object which pushes snow", it means "drug pusher", literally reading "Snow-drug seller". (A phrase which would have made more sense in a translation of ''[[Snow Crash]]''.)
** In Italian, "neve" (snow) is also a slang word for cocaine, so if the botched French translation was translated into Italian, you would get a label that defines the snow pusher as a cocaine seller.
* The United States government did this recently{{when}} when dealing with the Russian government. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hands something to the Russian official and even says "We worked hard to find the right Russian word", just before the official points at one of the words and says "That's the wrong word." [[Incredibly Lame Pun|Hillarity]] [[Hilarity Ensues|Ensues]]. (Hillary's face was a mixture of [[Oh Crap]] and trying not to laugh)
** Hillary Clinton ''meant'' to write the word "Reset" on a big button. The button would be pressed, and the Russian-American relations would be symbolically resetted to a clean slate. In Russian the word would be "Perezagruzka". Alas, the actual word written was "Peregruzka" - "Overload". Russian official Lavrov immediately parried with a false translation of his own: he (mistakenly) explained that "Peregruzka" means "Overcharged".
*** "Overcharged" ''can'' mean the same thing as "Overload" in English, it just isn't the dominant meaning.
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* One still-existing kingdom in Africa has two state copies of [[The Bible]]. According to the King of that kingdom, one of them is a recent, pretty decent translation. The other one was a gift from Queen Victoria, and thanks to the state of knowledge of the language in question at the time, contains translation gems like "The Lord is the keeper of my sheep."
* One brand of prawn crackers (the kind you fry yourself) proudly proclaimed them to have a "peculiar taste". Somebody ought to inform that translator that the use of "peculiar" to mean "unique" is archaic; it's ''far'' more commonly used to mean "weird".
* The Spanish version of this wiki suffers from this. "Disonancia del Angustia" for [[Angst Dissonance]](in Spanish all nouns are gendered, "del" is a male pronoun and "Angustia" a female one, thus the right
** Also, note that the word "tópico" for [[Trope]] exists, though "Tropo" (a linguistic concept) is what's being used due to catchiness.
* An English edition of the Helsinki Metro newspaper once titillated readers with the headline "150 kg ? [[Gag Boobs|Biggest heroine bust ever]]!"
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* [http://sadtranslations.livejournal.com/1535777.html This] is why [[Mattress Tag Gag|removing mattress tags]] is so horrible: how else would you guess that this mattress is one of those you should not pet while it's in a washing machine?
* Intel® Graphics Driver for Windows® 7/8.1/10* [15.40 6th '''Generals''']. It happens when either you're living in [[William Gibson]]'s novel or "[http://sadtranslations.livejournal.com/1523352.html When you're corporation Intel, but are saving on living translations...]" (speaking of the drivers, one of the comments also refers to the classics of computer assisted English-to-Russian pratfalls - "herders of mouse").
* Humorous writer Michael Green once accompanied an English rugby tour behind the Iron curtain, into communist Romania. He notes that the senior English dignitary accompanying the visitors realised he would have to make a speech at an official reception that night. Not knowing any Romanian, he he reasoned that if he copied out the wording that appeared on the toilet doors, he would at least know the Romanian for ''Ladies and Gentlemen.'' He used these words to open his speech, and to his pleased surprise, it earned him a standing ovation from his hosts. He asked a Romanian rugby official afterwards, saying he was so pleased his speech had been received well, and the local smiled gravely. "Yes, Sir Henry. It does make you sit up straight when you are addressed as ''Urinals and Water Closets!''
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