Either World Domination or Something About Bananas: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

A comedy trope. An incidental character says something in a foreign language. A character who either speaks a little of the language or has a translation method attempts to explain it to the others. For some reason, he/she narrows it down to a few possibilities, and they have absolutely nothing in common in terms of meaning, often with one being rather reasonable in the context while the other is absurdly different. Sometimes they pin it down to the one translation but then it's just so ill fitting, they can spot it's wrong. There's a tendency to have the two resultant statements sound similar even after translation. One begins to wonder what kind of language could possibly have that property, but real languages ''are'' that weird.

== Literature ==

*** Even more, considering the abundance of homophones.

** In the same book, Rincewind is often shown cycling through different meanings of what is presumably the same phrase. It's all [[Translation Convention|represented as English]], but it's an accurate, and hilarious, reflection of problems non-native speakers of Chinese can have pronouncing the words/phrases they really want.

* ''[[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.

** Unlike most examples, it wasn't really mistaken or confused: it ''deliberately'' chose the option that would let it {{spoiler|kill people, because it hated humans and was bored}}.

* In the ''[[Vorkosigan Saga]]'' novel ''Diplomatic Immunity'':

{{quote| Fourteen languages were handled by nineteen different brands of auto-translators, several of which, Miles decided, must have been purchased at close-out prices from makers going deservedly belly-up. [...] The fourth iteration of [[Ask Sealer Greenlaw]] was finally met with a heartrending wail, in chorus, from the back of the room of, "But Greenlaw said to ask ''you''!", except for the translation device that came up a beat later with, "Lawn rule sea-hunter inquiring altitude unit!"}}

{{quote| '''Ax''': He’s welcoming [[Big Bad|the visser]] back aboard the Blade ship. Or he may be telling him his brother is a meteor fragment. I understand [[Common Tongue|Galard]], but this morph’s hearing is very uncertain.}}

== Live Action TV ==

* Done in an ''[[I Love Lucy]]'' episode where Lucy is arrested for a crime she didn't commit in Paris and must hold a conversation that chains from her, to her English/Spanish speaking husband to a Spanish/German speaking cop to the German/French arresting officer.

{{quote| '''Dax''': ''During the reckoning, the Bajorans will either suffer horribly or... eat fruit.''<br />

'''Sisko''': ''... Eat fruit?''<br />

'''Dax''': ''Given the tone of the rest of the inscriptions, I would bet on the horrible suffering.'' }}

*** 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.}}

** Which may look strange at first, considering the apparent unlikelihood of any other language having "leg" and "legacy" use similar sounds. However, as [[Reality Is Unrealistic]], it happens frecuently in [[Real Life]]; see below.

* ''[[The Suite Life On Deck]]'' has an incident where Cody translates some hieroglyphs as instructions to free Bailey from a curse unleashed by a crown. "...that or a recipe for fish tacos".

{{quote| '''Ivanova:''' Ah, hell.<br />

''The White Star's guns all start firing at nothing.''<br />

** And then there was:

{{quote| '''Ivanova:''' (in Minbari) Engines at full...high power. Hatrack ratcatcher to port weapons... brickbat lingerie!}}

** From the season three episode "Under Covers":

{{quote| '''Tony''': What's he saying?<br />

** "The Meat Puzzle", when talking about Ducky's mother:

{{quote| '''Tony''': Her usual afternoon fistful of Wild Turkey. Her last words to me were either "I'm gonna slit your throat" or "kiss your moat." I couldn't tell 'cause she was slurring.}}

* The [[Live Action Adaptation]] of the French novel series ''[http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fant%C3%B4mette Fantômette]'' had one episode with a henchman translating the manual of a stolen machine from Japanese. He reads that an improper use could result in a big ''something'', which could be an explosion or a samurai attack.

It could also be Billy. }}

* Tatooine, ''[[Knights of the Old Republic]]''. The player can ask HK-47 to translate the speech of a Jawa who's asking for help rescuing his tribe from the Sand People (the PC speaks Jawa so the game provides subtitles, but the Jawa's grammar is [[Strange Syntax Speaker|even worse than Yoda's]]). HK responds that there is a 98% chance that he is indeed asking you for assistance with rescuing his tribe. The remaining 2% is the chance that "the diminutive organic is merely looking for trouble and needs a good blasting. [[Token Evil Teammate|This may be wishful thinking on my part]], Master".

{{quote| '''Tails:''' So anyway, they are either being used for their magical powers by an evil man, or to make underwear to be worn by salad.}}

** Of course, he tells Sonic that the device can only translate Yakker's language into ''binary''. Genius or not, it's impressive that he's getting words out of it at all, even if they are the wrong ones.

== Webcomics ==

{{quote| '''Vaarsuvius:''' On the other hand, the Draconic words for "exit" and "swarm of puffins" are very similar...<br />

''Belkar:'' Dragons HAVE a word for "swarm of puffins"??<br />

* In ''[[Jimmy Neutron]]'' Sheen did this once, when he believed he could read hieroglyphics simply because they looked similar to writing from his favorite TV show. They clearly were not the same.

* The [[Trope Namer]] is ''[[The Fairly Odd Parents]]'', 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."

{{quote| '''Frylock:''' He agrees! ''Or he DISAGREES!!''}}

* In the ''[[Pinky and The Brain]]'' episode ''Around the World in 80 Narfs'', Brain accidentally upsets a group of Italians. Pinky pulls out his phrase book and says something to them. He then tells Brain that he either said "We're sorry" or a terrible insult. Naturally, it was the insult.

** Ginatayomi is a kind of humorous Japanese wordplay based on ambiguity in where one word starts and another begins (as written Japanese uses no spaces between characters). Basically, a sentence with two interpretations, one perfectly normal, the other similar, but very strange. Example: ''Pan tsukutta'' koto aru means, "Have you ever made bread before?" But ''pantsu kutta'' koto aru means, "Have you ever eaten underwear before?"

** One (probably apocryphal) story goes that a man wants to say his hobby is fishing - tsuri - but accidentally pronounces it ''suri'' - pickpocketing. [[Hilarity Ensues]].

* ''Sumomo mo momo, momo mo momo, sumomo mo momo mo momo no uchi'' - "Plums are peaches, and peaches are peaches, and plums and peaches are both types of peaches."

* The Chinese text '[http://www.fa-kuan.muc.de/SHISHI.RXML The Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den]' takes this about as far as it goes by only using ''one syllable'': 'shi'. The meaning is changed by the words' tones.

* American Sign Language has a few of these as well. The signs for 'hungry' and 'horny' are basically the same sign with one moving up and one moving down. 'Recently' and 'sex' are the same, with one moving backwards and one moving forwards. 'Shy' and 'hooker' can be mistaken for each other.

** In fact, almost every sign in ASL is similar to another, and a lot of them only differ by a few centimetres (moving a finger down five or ten centimetres can completely change a meaning, for example). For this reason, in deaf culture, it's extremely impolite to interrupt a conversation - it takes a lot of concentration even for fluent signers to see the difference between some signs.

* Slavic languages with their many grammatical cases, declinations and importance of proper accenting to differentiate them can have sentences become indecipherable/wrong thanks to one wrongly placed stress.

** For example in Bosnian: "Gore gore gore gore." can mean 16 different things (with each "gore" meaning either Up, Worse, Burn or Forested Mountain depending on where you place your stresses.)