Either World Domination or Something About Bananas: Difference between revisions

{{quote|''"He either said 'Make humans the dominant species on earth again,', or he just wanted a banana. I dunno, I could be paraphrasing."''|'''Cosmo''', ''[[The Fairly Odd ParentsOddParents]]''}}

** In ''[[Discworld/Jingo|Jingo]]'', before the fighting between the Ankh-Morpork army and the Klatchian army begins, Klatchian Prince Cadram invites Lord Rust and his officers to a pre-battle breakfast under a truce. Lord Rust brings along his Lieutenant Hornett, who knows Klatchian, as a translator. Sadly for Lord Rust, Lt. Hornett only knows how to '''read''' Klatchian, resulting in Lt. Hornett being unable to translate ''"Do any of you gentlemen speak Klatchian?"'' and then partially translating ''"this clown’s in charge of an army?"'' as ''"Er... something about... to own, to control... er... "''.

** In ''[[Discworld/Interesting Times|Interesting Times]]'', [[Terry Pratchett]] tells us that in various places around the Discworld, the word "Aargh!" can mean anything from "Your wife is a big hippo!" to "Quick, extra boiling oil!" This ends in a [[Running Gag]] throughout the book where people misinterpret other people's screams to various effects. ("I'm not even married!") This likely parodies tonal languages such as Chinese, where what would sound like one word in English could be translated in up to four completely different ways in Mandarin, depending on tone. Cantonese would have ''nine'' possible translations.

** In ''[[Discworld/The Fifth Elephant|The Fifth Elephant]]'', Vimes makes the mistake of trying out his extremely limited Dwarfish. Apparently, he never had reason to discover that the word he's been told means "you" actually means something closer to "you troublemaking lawbreaker". It doesn't help that the version of Dwarfish he's most familiar with is the slang-laden "Street Dwarfish."

* ''[[Sewer Gas and Electric]]'' by Matt Ruff: The sentient AI that lives in Disneyland overhears a conversation behind the doors of Walt Disney's secret speakeasy --— hey, [[It Makes Sense in Context]], OK? --— and applies its audio filtering subroutines. It decides that the conversation is either a) a conversation about dinner and drinks or b) {{spoiler|override instructions telling it to kill 1000 people in ironic ways, and to construct a robotic race of "perfect Negroes."}} It chooses option B.

* In [[Lawrence A Perkins]]' story "Delivered With Feeling", the alien race which calls in an Earth fixer to help them deal with other, invading aliens has a VERY''very'' difficult language, fragmented into numerous dialects. The fixer's solution involves a "patriot dialect" keyed to the slogan "The manly honor of our forefathers is unblemished"; but the invaders manage to render it as "There are no body lice on my grandfather's mustache". This actually makes sense in context, as the fixer tells his computer to make it as difficult as possible for foreigners to understand.

** From "The Reckoning", an episode of ''[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine|DS9]]'':

*** It turned out to be the {{spoiler|fruit eating (watch what Kira's eating at the beginning)}}.

{{quote|'''Dr. Jackson''': Uh, w-well, my translation's a little bit vague, um, I think the circle means 'the place of our legacy'-- — or it could be 'a piece of our leg', but the first seems to make more sense.}}

* The ''[[Whose Line Is It Anyway?|Whose Line Is It Anyway]]'' game "Foreign Film Dub" has two players [[As Long as It Sounds Foreign|pretend to speak a foreign language]] and the other two players "translating" their lines. Given the nature of the show, the trope would apply even if the language being spoken was accurate.

'''Belkar:''' Dragons HAVE a word for "swarm of puffins"??

* The [[Trope Namer]] is ''[[The Fairly Odd ParentsOddParents]]'', specifically [[The Movie]] ''Abra-Catastrophe'', wherein Cosmo serves as the translator for the monkey following the group around. Every time he translates something the monkey said, he always provides something that makes sense for context, then adds, "...or something about a banana. I'm not sure which."

*** [https://web.archive.org/web/20130920034448/http://french.about.com/od/vocabulary/a/homophones.htm Way too many examples]

*** The various meanings of these words aside, this has led to some hilarity in the translation of the name of Russian leader [[Vladimir Putin]]. You see, pronouncing the word spelled "P-u-t-i-n" according to French rules produces a word pronounced ''exactly'' like ''putain'' (again, "prostitute"). As a result, the French Academy decided to spell his name "Poutine", which produces a similar ''pronunciation'' to the Russian "Путин"...only to realize, too late, that this official transcription now made French-Canadians think of delicious fries with curds and gravy every time they saw or heard the name of the leader of a major world power. To rub salt on the wound, word got out to English Canada and to the border regions with the United States (which are familiar with the dish), which all had a good laugh at the ''Academie's'' expense; word got out even farther when William Safire dedicated a disapproving "On Language" column in ''The New York Times'' to the subject in 2005. Even funnier--Rickfunnier—Rick Mercer (an Anglophone Newfie) had, in a brilliant prank, convinced then-candidate [[George W. Bush]] that the [[Canadian Politics|Canadian PM]] of the time (c. 2000) was a person by the name of "Jean Poutine" (rather than the actual Jean Chretien). And now "Vladimir Poutine" is President/PM/President of Russia. Presumably, they're cousins...

* In recent news, a Turkish man messaged his wife a sentence that reads "You change the topic every time you run out of arguments". The cellphone doesn't have the letter "ı", however, and used the standard letter "i" instead, so the word "sıkısınca" looked far too much like the word "sikişince" -- which—which changed the sentence to "You change the topic every time we f***". His wife showed the message to his father, who was enraged; this actually led to [http://gizmodo.com/382026/a-cellphones-missing-dot-kills-two-people-puts-three-more-in-jail two deaths].

* Then there is "crack" (Anglicization of Irish language "craic", or is it the other way around?), slangy word for good-time-and-good-company. There is a tale of a Bronx bar which advertised "free crack", and found it had been -- misunderstoodbeen—misunderstood.