Mistranslations - English in other countries
Wednesday, January 7th, 2009
It’s a favourite cautionary tale among translation professionals: Make sure your translations are accurate or you and your product could become a laughing stock. The first step in achieving this is to use a native speaker - a golden rule that should never be broken.
Here are a few examples (many of which you may have seen before - but the old ones are often the best) of mistranslations into English - a language I would hate to have to learn as a foreign language myself, as there are so many exceptions to rules and slight nuances as the following will demonstrate:
“We take your bags and send them in all directions” - Airline Ticket Office, Copenhagen (Never a truer word said!)
