lost in translation: 8 funny translation mistakes

Lost in Translation8 Funny Translation Mistakes

1. Lusts VS. Desires• President Carter traveled to

Poland in 1977. The State Department found a Russian interpreter who knew Polish, but was not a professional in that language. Carter’s interpreter translated him saying things in Polish like "when I abandoned the United States" (for "when I left the United States") and "your lusts for the future" (for "your desires for the future"). The media in both countries enjoyed the mistakes.

2. Horned VS. Radiance• St. Jerome’s Latin translation of the Old Testament

from Hebrew contained a famous mistake. When Moses comes down from Mount Sinai his head has “radiance” or, in Hebrew, “karan.” St. Jerome had read “karan” as “keren,” or “horned.” For centuries, paintings and sculptures of Moses showed horns.

3. Handwashing?• This sticker on a ceramic dish says it should be

washed by hand. The French reads “It is recommended to wash hands”.

Dragon Punch VS. Sheng Long• A character in the Japanese video

game Street Fighter II says, “If you cannot overcome the Rising Dragon Punch, you cannot win!" The translator for the Japanese wording interpreted the characters for "rising dragon" as "Sheng Long." The characters can mean both in Japanese depending on the context, and the translator thought a new person was being introduced to the game. Gamers went crazy trying to figure out who this Sheng Long was and how they could defeat him.

5. KFC Fingers• Kentucky Fried

Chicken opened their first store in China using their common slogan, “finger lickin’ good.” Unfortunately, it was mistranslated to “eat your fingers off.”

6. Get Loose• Coors, the Brewing Company, mistranslated its

slogan “Turn it loose” in Spanish to “Suffer from diarrhea.”

7. Pepsi Zombies?• When Pepsi launched a new campaign with the

slogan “Pepsi brings you back to life,” it translated into Mandarin meaning “Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave.”

8. Cold War Threats• During the Cold War, Soviet

premier Nikita Khrushchev gave a speech in Russian, part of which was interpreted as "we will bury you." The U.S. worried that Russia was planning a nuclear attack. But the sense of the Russian phrase was more like "we will live to see you buried" or "we will outlast you.“ There was no imminent nuclear attack on the horizon.

How to stop the mistranslations• The best way to avoid funny, and sometimes

serious, translation mistakes is to hire a well-trained translator in the correct language.

• If you are planning to do anything with legal departments in other countries, be sure to find someone who is familiar with the terms and practices of those countries.

MultiLing For Patent Translation• MultiLing is an international patent translation

company that can translate your documents into any language you want.

• For more information on MultiLing and what they can do for you, check out these pages.

• http://www.multiling.com/IP-outsourcing.aspxhttps://www.facebook.com/multilingcorporationhttps://twitter.com/MultiLing