Wordsmith.org
Posted By: WhitmanO'Neill Mistranslations - 04/10/02 01:19 AM
Here's a link form Dr. Bill's Manic Kitty site, mistranslations: actual English signs posted in the various hotels and resorts of the world. This was one of my favorties:

A sign posted in Germany's Black Forest: It is strictly forbidden on
our black forest camping site that people of different sex, for
instance, men and women, live together in one tent unless they are
married with each other for that purpose.


Thanks, Dr. Bill!


http://eserver.org/langs/mistranslations.txt

Your Happy Epeolatrist!
Posted By: wwh Re: Mistranslations - 04/10/02 01:25 AM
To make it short: No fornicating in the forest.

Posted By: doc_comfort Re: Mistranslations - 04/10/02 01:40 AM
Shorter, and ruder: No f****** under fir

Posted By: hev Re: Mistranslations - 04/10/02 01:48 AM
Mistranslations... ah, travel stories abound.

While travelling/working in Indonesia, the theatre group I was with attended an assembly of staff and students at an International School. While primarily English speaking, they regularly made announcements in both Bahasa Indonesia and Bahasa Inggeris. A new-ish (well, new to speaking Indonesian) teacher introduced the principal as the "Kelapa Sekolah" school coconut instead of "Kepala Sekolah" Principal, literally Head of the School. Needless to say most people were trying to hold back their laughter, while the Principal made his way to the stage!

Anyone else got "been there done that" translation funnies?

Hev
Posted By: hev Re: Mistranslations - 04/10/02 01:52 AM
Shorter, and ruder

Oh, Doc, you've obviously left your bedside manner elsewhere.

Hev
Posted By: Jackie Re: Mistranslations - 04/10/02 02:02 AM
Oh, Doc, you've obviously left your bedside manner elsewhere.
In the forest, perhaps?

Posted By: Angel Re: Mistranslations - 04/10/02 02:31 AM
In a Bangkok dry cleaner's: Drop your trousers here for best results.

Outside a Paris dress shop: Dresses for street walking.

In a Rome laundry: Ladies, leave your clothes here and spend the afternoon having a good time.


Hey....who can I tootle????????


Posted By: modestgoddess Re: Mistranslations - 04/10/02 04:03 AM
teacher introduced the principal as the "Kelapa Sekolah"
Hey hev - that puts me in mind o' the time sumbuddy famous (a USn pres? Roosevelt, even?) introduced himself to the massed crowds in Berlin by saying, in incorrect Cherman: "I am a jelly doughnut!"

Posted By: of troy Re: Mistranslations - 04/10/02 01:12 PM
Re: "I am a jelly doughnut!"

that was JFK, during the berlin crisis. He had the words right, I am a berliner -- but it was an idiom -- a berliner was a fruit filled breakfast pastry, (not quite a jelly donut) He should have said, I am from berlin..

didn't matter much, the people of berlin understood his intent, even if he used the wrong idiom.

Posted By: wwh Re: Mistranslations - 04/10/02 01:52 PM
"Jelly doughnut" Dear of troy: I saw a site somewhere that only a few snotty journalists made that mistranslation.

Posted By: Max Quordlepleen . - 04/11/02 12:54 AM
Posted By: Leviathan Re: Mistranslations - 04/11/02 02:37 AM
This I saw on the Letterman show a couple of years ago:
"Dr. Charles Schwartz, Dentist; the best technology, gentile care"

"If, perhaps, everything is but a dream, Who's the one sleeping?"
Posted By: Jackie Re: Mistranslations - 04/11/02 04:39 PM
cruelly shortened to Te Papa, "Our Place")
Why "cruelly", Sweet One? 'Our place' sounds cozy and homey to me.

Posted By: JosieWales Re: Mistranslations - 04/11/02 05:29 PM
Google has a service that allows one to translate to any of several languages. It's designed for webpages in other Romance languages (I get them all the time ;P) Anyhow, its awful fun to have the server translate a phrase from English to a foreign tongue and back. The results can be riotous (also dull.)

Give it a shot.

AWADTalk's most prolific lurker:

JosieWales

Posted By: Jackie Re: Mistranslations - 04/11/02 06:22 PM
Hey, JosieWales, you aren't in Wales! I still love your name, though. The Google I go to doesn't show a translator you can just click on, though I typed 'translations' into the Search box, and got 1,960,000 hits. They're all pretty good, too. Did you by any chance mean BabelFish? (Said the ignorant one.)


Posted By: JosieWales Re: Mistranslations - 04/11/02 06:48 PM
http://www.google.com/language_tools?hl=en

try this. I tried going through several different iterations in several languages, and that spices it up a bit.

Hi Jackie. Thanks!

The Outlaw

Posted By: Max Quordlepleen . - 04/11/02 07:22 PM
Posted By: Capital Kiwi Re: Mistranslations - 04/11/02 07:45 PM
And flat is precisely what Te Papa should be. Then they could build a real museum and a halfway decent art gallery ... and I've said so several times in response to their surveys, but the bulldozers haven't turned up yet, dammit.

Seems silly that I've spent so much time in meetings there considering how baaaaaad I consider the place to be.

As to Te Tiriti O Waitangi, I tend to agree with you. Except that I seem to have a greater respect for the astuteness of the average 1840s Maori chief than you have, Max. The argument can only be over the precise meaning of that much used and abused term rangitiratanga. And that's probably more down to cultural differences than malice.

Posted By: Max Quordlepleen . - 04/11/02 07:54 PM
Posted By: hev Re: Mistranslations - 04/12/02 12:13 AM
Cain't let it go by:

AWADTalk's most prolific lurker:

JosieWales

WELCOME out from the woodwork, JW. Wow! How do you manage to stay out of some of these discussions? (The wordie ones, not t'others.) Glad you poked your nose in here though...

Posted By: JosieWales Poe to France and back - 04/12/02 01:32 PM
By request: Google's translation of Poe to French and back. Note that Google sometimes doesn't know how to translate words and so sometimes leaves them how they are.


Once over one dull midnight, whereas I pondered weak and wearies me, above much a volume strange and curious about lore forgotten, whereas I inclined the head, almost napping, suddenly there came a tapping, in date of approximately gently a RAP, RAP with my door of room. `' Tis a certain visitor, ' I murmured, ` typing with my door of room - only this, and nothing more.'

Ah, distinctly I remember that it was dull December, and each one braises separate of death worked its phantom on the floor. Ardently I wished the following day; - vainly I had sought to borrow from my surcease books of the pain - pain for Lenore lost - for the first rare one and radiant which angels called them Lenore - unknown here for the evermore.

And to bruir dubious sad of silk of each curtain crimson made me quiver - filled me of fantastic terrors never before felt; So that now, with motionless the beat of my heart, I repeating `' Tis a certain entry entreating was held of visitor with my door of room - a certain entry entreating of late visitor to my door of room; - this it is, and nothing more,

' currently my heart developed more extremely; hesitating then more, Mister of `, ' said I, ` or Madam, really your remission which I beseech; But the fact is me napping, and so much gently you came RAP, and so much slightly you came tapping, typing with my door of room, this I rare were sure that I heard you ' - here I opened with far the door; - darkness there, and nothing more.

Deeply in this disfiguring darkness, length I was held there wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming of the dreams any mortal ever dared with the dream to dream before but silence was uninterrupted, and the darkness did not give any mark, and the only word spoken there was the whispered word, ` Lenore!' This that I whispered, and an echo murmured behind the word, ` Lenore!' Simply this and nothing more.

Again in the room turning, all my heart at home burning, soon still I heard a tapping slightly more extremely than front. of ` ` surely, ' I said, surely which is something with my trellis of window; Let see me then, which thereat is, and this mystery explore them - let my heart be always a moment and this mystery explores them; - ' Tis wind and nothing more!'

Open-here me threw the obturator, when, with much a flirt and an undulation, inside took there a step raven stately saintly of the days of the yore. Not least the obeisance made it; stopped instantaneous or not remained it; But, with mien of the lord or the lady, perched above my door of room - Perched on a bust of Pallas just above my door of room - Perched, and rested, and nothing more.

Then this ebony wood bird alluring my sad imagination in the smile, by the serious and severe decorum of the mine it carried, ` although the peak thy is shorn and shaven, thou, ' I said, art of ` the aucuns that sure craven. Horrible disasters and antiques raven to wander of night of the shore - say to me which lordly name thy is on the shore of Plutonian of the night!' Quoth raven, ` Nevermore.'

Much I marvelled this ungainly poultry to so much simply hear the speech, Thouhg its answer little significance - little to be relevance; For we let us not can prevent oneself from being appropriate that no being living of human never however was blessed with seeing the bird above its door of room - bird or animal above the bust carved above its door of room, with such a name like the ` Nevermore.'

But raven, to rest insulated on the placid bust, the spoke only, which a word, like if its heart in a this word it made the outpour. Nothing more then it pushed - not a feather then it floated - until of I ` more than hardly murmured that other friends controlled before - on the will of following day it leave me, because my hopes flew front.' Then the bird indicated, ` Nevermore.'

Startled with calms broken by answer thus suitably spoken, of ` ` without any doubt, ' said I, which it growth is its only current and store, caught of a certain unhappy Master that the disaster unmerciful followed quickly and more quickly followed until its songs a boring of burden - until the dirges of its hope which boring melancholic person of burden of "Never-nevermore."

But raven by always alluring all my sad heart in the smile, right I rolled a seat deadened in front of the bird and the bust and the door; Then, on velvet going down, betook of I myself to bind imagination to imagination, thinking what this sinister bird of yore - what meant this, ungainly, bird emaciated and and sinister disaster of yore in the ` Nevermore of coasser.'

This that I rested occupied in the estimate, but no syllable expressing with the poultry of which the burning eyes now burned in the core of my chest; This and more I rested to guess, with my head at ease resting on the lining violet of the velvet of the cushion which the artificial light was delighted the o' er, but whose velvet lining violet with the o' er to be delighted by lamo-light, it will tighten, oh, nevermore!

Then, the methought, the air developed denser, scented of an invisible censer balanced by the angels of which weak foot-fall tinkled on the tufté floor. ` Wretch, ' I cried, thee lent by hath thy of God of ` - by these angels it sent the deferment of thee - deferment and nepenthe of the memories of tha of Lenore! Quaff, quaff of the OH this nepenthe pleasant, and forget this lost Lenore!' Quoth raven, ` Nevermore.'

prophet of `!' the aforementioned I, thing of ` of evil! - prophet always, if bird or devil! - if the tempter sent, or if storm did it throw the thee in the air with ground, afflicted here however all undaunted, on this magic ground of desert - on this house by the haunted horror - says to me that really, I beseech - is there - is balsam in Gilead there? - say me - say to me that, I beseech!' Quoth raven, ` Nevermore.'

prophet of `!' the aforementioned I, thing of ` of evil! - prophet always, if bird or devil! By this sky which yields above us - by this God us both adore - say this heart with pain charged if, in Aidenn moved away, it will étreindra has sainted first who angels called them Lenore - étreignez first rare and radiant, that the angels called Lenore?' Quoth raven, ` Nevermore.'

the is this word our sign of the departure, the bird or the fiend!' I pushed piercing cries upstarting - the ` again obtain the thee in the storm and the shore of Plutonian of the night! Do not leave any feather black like marks of this hath thy of heart of spoken lie! Leave my uninterrupted loneliness! - stop the bust above my door! Take the nozzle thy out of my heart, and take the form of tha to be left in addition to my door!' Quoth raven, ` Nevermore.'

And raven, while never not moving, always rests, always rests on the bust of pallid of Pallas just above my door of room; And its eyes have all to seem it of a demon which dreams, and the o' er of artificial light it sliding ring throws its shade on the floor; And my heart of out of this shade which is floating on the floor will be raised - nevermore!