My Hovercraft Is Full of Eels: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

A character thinks he can speak some language, but fails comedically and says something entirely different than what was intended—often complete nonsense or something rude. For example, maybe he tries to say "Can I please buy some matches?", but actually says "My Hovercraft Is Full Of Eels". [[Hilarity Ensues]].

This typically has nothing to do with bad translations; the original speech was incorrect. For bad translations, see [[Either World Domination or Something About Bananas]], [[Blind Idiot Translation]], or [[Translation Train Wreck]]. However, if the language being spoken isn't the language of the work as a whole, there's usually a translation back so that the audience can see just how wrong the character's speech actually was. For example, Bob thinks he speaks French well. He speaks in French to a waiter, who looks at him oddly and says "Monsieur, I do not think that you really meant to say that there is a blue banana in your navel."

 

 

Also happens sometimes with written language: some languages (such as Hungarian and Arabic) rely on diacritics to distinguish similar-looking words, and ideographic languages (such as Chinese and Japanese) have complicated characters whose meaning (and pronunciation) can completely change with the difference of a few strokes.

{{examples}}

== Advertising ==

** As an interesting side note, the Italian phrase for "frozen fish" is "pesce congelato," which sounds identical to "pesce con gelato," or "fish with ice cream."

* A German beer commercial had Indian businessmen in a beer garden doing this. When the waitress arrives, one of them says "Ich möchte diesen Teppich nicht kaufen." (I do not want to purchase this carpet). The waitress just nods and proceeds to serve them the advertised beer brand with the businessmen happily accepting.

* One of the "Get a Mac" ads in the UK had PC attempting to communicate with a Japanese printer (Mac had language compatibility and could do so). He spouted the phrases "I am a rice cake" and "Where is the train station?"

* [[Invoked]] in ''[[My Big Fat Greek Wedding]]'', when Nick intentionally tells Ian the wrong phrases. First Ian inadvertently tells her mother "Nice boobs" instead of "Thanks for the food." The second time, he's wise to the trick and asks Toula's cousin to confirm that the phrase he's being told to use is correct; unfortunately, the two are conspirators and he still ends up telling the whole family "I have three testicles."

* Ringo (a.k.a. Pumpkin) in ''[[Pulp Fiction]]'' notably calls for the "garçon" to bring him more coffee, believing that it's the French word for waiter or server, and his waitress immediately explains that "garçon" is French for "boy". Actually "garçon" has both meanings, [http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/garçon as you can see here]

* The movie ''[[First Family]]'' features an African ambassador who has 'taught' himself English by memorizing random phrases from a phrasebook and uses them regardless of their relevance to the situation.

* In ''[[Four Weddings and a Funeral]]'', a girl learns sign language in order to talk to David, a deaf guy she's sweet on. She doesn't get it quite right ... which makes her all the more adorable.

{{quote|I am thirsty ("I am thursday")

I am hungry ("I am hungary") }}

 

== Literature ==

* In ''Borgel'' by [[Daniel Pinkwater]], the title character gets into a conversation in a language he doesn't speak at all. His conversational partner later informs him that he'd claimed to be a politically incorrect sardine who likes to eat the tires off motorcycles. ("I said that?" "Like a native.")

** Carrot just thinks she's incorrect, because dwarves look the same genderwise. One of the earlier books explains this.

{{quote|'' 'Just give me all your food and... unwilling dogs, will you?' ''

'' They watched him impassively.''

'' 'Damn. I mean... arranged beetles?... variety of waterfall?... Oh, yes... money.' '' }}

* ''[[Dave Barry]]'s Only Travel Guide You'll Ever Need'' plays with this by having translation guides that mostly consist of random sentences in English like "You bum, there is a fish in your library." The foreign translations were mostly just gibberish.

** "Dave Barry Does Japan" features a real-life example that happened to Dave. He attempted to thank a hotel worker in Japanese. Showing typical Japanese politeness, the man bowed and left, at which point Dave's then ten-year-old son pointed out that what he had actually said was "Very much good morning, sir."

* In ''Peter and the Starcatchers'', Molly Aster can communicate with porpoises fluently... ''except'' for the standard greeting, which she always mistakes for the phrase for "My teeth are green." She remains blissfully unaware of this throughout the novel because the porpoise Ammm is too polite to correct her. In ''Peter and the Sword of Mercy'', her daughter makes a similar mistake.

* S.J. Perelman used this occasionally; at one point in ''Westward Ha!'' he asks a Far Eastern noble "whether the pen of his uncle is in the garden". In a mild variation, the person he's talking to actually speaks perfect idiomatic English.

''"I noticed no insults," I replied. "You merely gnawed my arm."

''Gestures and smiles of perfect understanding.''}}

 

== Live Action TV ==

* A more direct example from ''[[Scrubs]]'': Eliott Reed (who is fluent in German) makes an intentional and dirty mistranslation to get revenge on Dr. Cox. Instead of telling his burly German speaking patient that "You have fluid on your lungs" - he says "Your wife has nice boobs.".

* Happens during a case involving two Latin dancers in ''[[Ally McBeal]]'' where John Cage, interrupting the two dancers (who constantly argue in Spanish) sputters out such phrases as 'I want to ride a little pony!' and 'I want a cookie!' to the bemusement of those present.

** This happens to Hawkeye when trying to speak French in "In Love and War".

** And, of course, there's the famous instance in which Frank Burns, while holding an auction, tries to wish the Korean crowd "peace and prosperity". In response, a man asks, "You wish us all a prostitute?"

* In ''[[The Far Side]]'', an alien misreads a dictionary and accidentally says "Take me to your stove".

* In ''[[Bloom County]]'', Oliver and Milo hack into Pravda and attempt to change the headline to "Gorbachev preaches disarmament! Total! Unilateral!" Somehow, the altered headline ends up reading "Gorbachev sings tractors! Turnip! Buttocks!"

 

== Radio ==

'''Tails''': They are either being used for their mystical powers by an evil man, or to make underwear to be worn by salad. }}

* Referencing the Monty Python example above, ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' has an "Orcish / Common Dictionary" and "Common / Orcish Dictionary" which translate "KEK" and "BUR" ({{spoiler|LOL}}) as "An aggressively passionate mating call."

 

== [[Web Comics]] ==

'''Melna''': Um... it means "Little Pink Man In Pink".

'''Donovan''': They lied to me. }}

*** It gets worse. The orc in question was under the impression that the Callanian phrase for "hello" was "Be afraid! I am very dangerous and I am going to kill you!".

**** Hey, that's a valid form of greeting!

*** And why has he been faking it for ''twenty years''?

{{quote|'''Donovan''': I'm a bard. Why do I do anything? [[It Amused Me|Because it's funny.]]}}

* In ''[[Daisy Owl]]'', at one point Steve is introduced to his long-lost family. His inability to speak Bear makes it seem like he's choking.

* Used in [http://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0279.html this] ''[[Darths and Droids]]'' strip, with the exact same line.

* A real-life version referenced in ''[[Scandinavia and The World]]'': according to the Danish writer, the Danish phrase "That's a major downer" can, if not pronounced carefully, come out as "That's the master negro". She had fun with this in a strip about Obama visiting Copenhagen.

* One ''[[Achewood]]'' strip involves Ray attempting to learn German from pornography. The results are...interesting.

'''Bun-bun''': "The word is pronounced 'imbecile'."

'''Alt-Torg''': ''"Ahh!"'' }}

* In ''[[Girls with Slingshots]]'', Chris starts learning American Sign Language so he can communicate with his new girlfriend Melody other than by texting. In one strip she signs by cupping her hand into a "c" and motioning from throat to stomach. He blushes and begins to take off his shirt. Then, noticing her blushing as well, he says, "Oh wait, that means you're ''hungry,''" to which she signs "Yes yes yes." Although the joke is [[Don't Explain the Joke|clear on its own]] from both their reactions, the specific mistake Chris made is that making the cupped-hand throat-to-stomach motion ''once'' means "I'm hungry," whereas doing it ''repeatedly'' means "I'm horny."

 

{{quote|'''O'Malley''': "¡Soy un pendejo morado y me gusta tomar aceite!" ("I am a purple jerk and like to drink motor oil!")... "That was rather long to mean 'hurry up'."

'''Lopez''': "Es una lengua muy poetica." ("It's a very poetic language.") }}

* Eugene Mirman - Secret agent: "Je m'appelle Eugene. Mon fromage est rouge. Shhhhh. Ma casa est ta voiture." ("My name is Eugene. My cheese is red. Shhhhh. My house is your car."). Later supplemented by some vocalisations that are translated only as "Hna ha hun ha?".

* In one of the ''[[Charlie the Unicorn]]'' animations, the pink and the blue Unicorn suddenly start speaking Russian, literally saying "My hovercraft is full of eels."

* On [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biDrtiK5EtE this episode] of ''[[Sailor Moon Abridged]]'' by [http://www.youtube.com/user/megami33 megami33] it's heavily used by the professional ice skaters. While actually many of the German sentences they say make sense - despite having a terribly wrong pronunciation - some don't. In one scene the male skater says "Wollen sie Geschlecht mit mir haben?" which actually means "Do you wanna have sex (= gender) with me?" It's quite obvious that the word to be used should be '''Sex''' or (rather formally) '''''Geschlechtsverkehr''''', either of which would mean '''''sexual act'''''.

* In ''[[I'm a Marvel And I'm a DC]]'', having the languages of Spanish and Portuguese zapped into his brain, Green Goblin threatens the Joker with a foreign phrase that even he doesn't understand. It translates into "What a nice dress. May I try it on?"

 

== [[Western Animation]] ==

* ''[[Scooby Doo]]'': When Mystery, Inc. go to Italy, Fred continually manages to misread his perfectly legitimate phrasebook, causing him to do things like requesting to rent a car that can outrace a flying hamster and ordering a potted plant at a restaurant.

 

* [[The Onion]]: "Area Man unsure if Southerner is looking for 'Pawn Shop' or 'Porn Shop.'"

** [[Fox News|Niel Cavuto]] made that mistake completely seriously.

 

== [[Real Life]] Examples ==

 

=== Chinese ===

* Bill Clinton was once giving a speech to a Chinese crowd. He opened by saying "hello" in Chinese, ni(2) hao(3). Unfortunately, he pronounced it ni(4) hao(4), coming up with "you are barking". Nobody had the heart to correct him.

* Another joke also illustrates this, where a speaker is announcing a plentiful harvest. First he tries to say the food is enough [for everyone] to eat (g'''ò'''u chi le), but due to dialectal differences, he says that the food was eaten by dogs (g'''ǒ'''u chi le). Then he tries to say "everybody go eat a big bowl [of food]" (da jia dou chi ge da wan ba) but ends up saying "everybody here is a big dumb bastard" (da jia dou shi ge da wang ba).

* This also applies to idioms and synonyms; cue running joke in certain circles where a young man recently returned to China eats a meal with relatives he hasn't seen in decades. At the end of the meal he stands up and says "Wo man le." It literally means "I'm full", but full as in physically filled, generally used for inanimate objects. (The proper way to say it is "Wo bao le.") Everyone sitting with him cracked up.

* Another urban legend tells of how, after mistranslating the phrase "finger lickin' good," KFC ended up advertising its chicken as resulting in the eater biting his own fingers off.

* A third urban legend tells of Pepsi-Cola accidentally translating their slogan, "Come alive! You're the Pepsi Generation!" as "Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave."

* The Chinese ideogram for the concept of "dry" or "dried" also has a less polite slang meaning and is [http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005195.html sometimes] mistranslated into English as "fuck."

* Former Canadian politician Jack Layton (RIP) told a story about having dinner with his future mother-in-law, who came from Hong Kong. He tried to say, "Thank you for the good food," in Cantonese, but he used the wrong tone and accidentally said, "Thank you for the good sex." Fortunately, his future mother-in-law was amused rather than offended.

 

=== Croatian ===

** There's a story of a guy new to Spanish who wondered why, every time he asked a kid their age, the kid would burst out laughing and answer, "Uno" (one).

** In the 1990s, there was an ad on the back of a magazine for Amazon.com's Spanish-language site, depicting the book cover "Cien anos de soledad", illustrating the common Web 1.0 problem of websites that don't take accent marks seriously.

* The Spanish word for "pregnant" sounds a lot like "embarrass". One pen company supposedly ran into this problem when an advertising campaign in Mexico claimed that their pens would not leak in your pocket and get you pregnant.

** Better yet: A lady went on a mission trip to Mexico (or somewhere). As she was wrapping up her work with the local church, they threw a dinner. At the dinner the pastor of the Mexican church made a long speech thanking her. When it was her turn to speak, she stood up and attempted to make a statement about how excessive the thanks were. What she actually said was, "Ahora el pastor me ha hizo embarazada." (translation: "Now the pastor has made me pregnant."

 

=== Vietnamese ===

 

=== Welsh ===

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Translation Tropes]]

[[Category:Dialogue]]

[[Category:Truth in Television]]

[[Category:Older Than Feudalism]]