Embarrassing English translation mistakes

Little John · Post by **Little John** » Tue Aug 26, 2008 5:34 pm

Hi all,

when non-native English speakers write here, they sometimes tend to translate words or sentences literally into English. Or they do not even translate single words, since they assume that it's the same word in English as it is in their language.

Typical examples from German speakers:
In an English restaurant, the hungry German tourist asks: "Waiter, when will I become a beefsteak?". The waiter politely replies: "I hope never, Sir." Instead of actually translating the word "bekommen", some people just say "become", since it sounds very similar. So when a German says "become", s/he might actually mean "get".
BTW: When a German says "actual(ly)", s/he might actually mean "current(ly)" (= "aktuell" in German).

I found a small illustrated collection of The most embarrassing English translation mistakes made by Germans.
I just post this here to let you know, that the Germans are not crazy. They just don't speak always perfect English.

Regards, Little John

Derek · Post by **Derek** » Tue Aug 26, 2008 6:12 pm

Interesting and quite funny as well, thanks for the link.

I have to say though that all the non-English-first-language posters here do a far better job of translating into English than I would trying to translate into German or French etc.

SFSxOI · Post by **SFSxOI** » Tue Aug 26, 2008 6:56 pm

Funny Little John, thanks

BTW, I called your phone number with a math problem, all i got was a guy who kept repeating "square root of 1, square root of 1, its all ball bearings" over and over again.

Rook Zimbabwe · Post by **Rook Zimbabwe** » Tue Aug 26, 2008 7:33 pm

Dang it SFSx01... quit calling me at 2AM!!!

Little John · Post by **Little John** » Tue Aug 26, 2008 7:42 pm

Rook Zimbabwe wrote:Dang it SFSx01... quit calling me at 2AM!!!

Hmmm ... maybe it was 10 AM in his time zone. And his math question was how to calculate what time it is in your time zone?

Regards, Little John

Post by **idle** » Tue Aug 26, 2008 11:21 pm

Here's a classic example which is applicable to both German and French

Phantasie/Fantasie = imagination in German and Similarity in French but in English it means fantasy which is tagtraum in German if I'm not mistaken.

Little John · Post by **Little John** » Wed Aug 27, 2008 5:21 am

idle wrote:Here's a classic example

Oh yes, I learned hat one about 35 years ago at school.

Thanks for reminding me.

Regards, Little John

Post by **idle** » Wed Aug 27, 2008 9:55 am

@little John

I was just imagining all the native English speakers who are not aware of such things, they may be currently fantasizing rather than actually imagining the possibilities and doing it.

It would appear I do both, as I'm certainly not getting any work done today!

Little John · Post by **Little John** » Wed Aug 27, 2008 1:15 pm

Another issue: punctuation.
A friend recently asked me: "So would you say you've learned from your mistakes?".
I replied: "Oh yes, I'm sure that I could repeat them exactly.".

Sometimes, punctuation mistakes can have rather unexpected consequences:

A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots into the air.
"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit.
The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over
his shoulder. "I'm a panda," he says, at the door. "Look it up."
The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an
explanation:
"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China.
Eats, shoots and leaves."

Regards, Little John

Kaeru Gaman · Post by **Kaeru Gaman** » Wed Aug 27, 2008 10:46 pm

lol... cool panda

...

nice word to be mixed up: concrete

"konkret" in german only means accurate(ly) and precise(ly),
it has nothing to do with artificial stone, that is called "Beton"

milan1612 · Post by **milan1612** » Wed Aug 27, 2008 11:10 pm

A nice word to mix up is 'brave'. In German there's the word 'brav' which means
something like well-behaved. I also remember using 'eventually' in an English test
where I actually wanted to say 'possibly', because there's this bloody
word in German 'eventuell'. 'Eventually' means 'schließlich'

ts-soft · Post by **ts-soft** » Wed Aug 27, 2008 11:16 pm

and milan is in english a diurnal bird of prey

byo · Post by **byo** » Wed Aug 27, 2008 11:27 pm

This thread =

Trond · Post by **Trond** » Thu Aug 28, 2008 9:13 pm

Norwegian - English:
Ratt - (Steering) wheel
Blakk - Broke
Spy - Throw up

Add to this that they drive on the wrong side in England and you have a Norwegian tourist trying to enter a cab on the driver side, saying this:
- Oh sorry, in my country the rat is on the other side!

And when he's about to pay the black driver:
- Do you take VISA? I'm black, you see!

And this loud shouting was overheard on a bus sightseeing:
- Stop the bus please! I must spy!

the.weavster · Post by **the.weavster** » Thu Aug 28, 2008 10:11 pm

Trond wrote:they drive on the wrong side in England

Because we were never conquered by Napoleon.

There was a Japanese television company that added English subtitles to it's productions in an attempt to market them abroad. One featured a man with one leg - apparently the other had been bitten off by a 'wild bore'

This has some funnies too: http://www.engrish.com/category_index.p ... =Chinglish

My favourite is the moisturiser that 'Remove Horniness'