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Blind Idiot Translation/Real Life: Difference between revisions
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The enormous one of the life lasts (Real Life)
* Asian languages like Japanese are ''notoriously'' tricky to translate into any Western language, due to having a very different set of phonemes; the most well known is L / R (light vs. right, free vs. flee etc.) which results in the [[Japanese Ranguage|stereotypical stupid Japanese accent]], as the equivalent sound in Japanese is somewhere between both. There's numerous others, though; B / V, S / TH (probably most notable for producing [[Final Fantasy VII
* A surprising number of Japansese translations, videogames in particular, directly translate symmetrical sentence structures. This is usually further run through the English-language concept of not using the same word repeatedly in a sentence to get weird sentences that [[Department of Redundancy Department|re-state themselves in a slightly different way for no apparent reason]].
* Pick any online text translator. Pick a block of text - the beginning of Hamlet's most famous soliloquy, for example. Now translate it to any other language, and back again.
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* An example from a Tokyo car rental brochure: "When passenger of foot heave in sight, tootle the horn. Trumpet him melodiously at first, but if he still obstacles your passage then tootle him with vigor."
** This sounds so very English. "Tootle vigorously, my dear chap, it seems that fellow over there obstacles our passage."
** 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 [http://urbanlegends.about.com/cs/historical/a/jfk_berliner.htm is an urban legend].
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** In 2006, a school in Wrexham had to remove a sign which translated "staff entrance" into Welsh as [[Magic Wand|"enchant the wooden stick".]]
** A temporary sign for pedestrians in Cardiff reading 'Look Right' in English read 'Look Left' in Welsh.
* [http://arcimperii.blogspot.com/2005/10/carmen-translated-synopsis_01.html This] infamous synopsis of the opera ''[[
** "The Sistrums Tinkeling!"
* The phenomenon was referred to by [[Stephen Fry]] in an article when he was discussing why he never did any classical roles. He commented that he didn't 'have the sort of calves that could carry off a pair of tights' which he thought could be translated as 'possess the type of young cows that could transport away two drunks".
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