Mistranslations and other amusing travel stories

Tazlima

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Something I read recently dredged up an old, amusing memory, and I thought it might make a good thread topic:

When I was in high school, way back in the olden days before cell phones, I went on an exchange trip to France.

Each student was assigned to stay with a host family, and my very first night, the girl I was staying with suggested we go to the "fête." Now my French was fairly terrible, and I had no idea what a "fête" was, but rather than flip through my little dictionary, I figured I'd find out what it was when we got there, so off we went. Turned out it was just super-duper fun. It was like the entire town was hanging out together outdoors. There was food and lots of games to play, all for free, and I was like "WOW, France is AMAZING!"

So the next night, my host asked if there was anything in particular I wanted to do, and I immediately responded, "Let's go back to the "fête!" She proceeded to laugh herself silly as she explained that it was one night only.

... See, I STILL didn't know the larger meaning of the word itself, so I had no idea "fête" translated to "party." (In this particular case, it was a massive neighborhood block party sort of affair, hence everything being free) With no basis of reference, I legitimately thought this was how french teenagers spent all their summer evenings. I thought going to "the fête," was like going to the mall or the skating rink, and it was so, sooo much better than anything in my own boring little hometown (which had neither mall nor skating rink - the only real teenage hangout was a local video rental/music store that tolerated our presence).

That was my first experience with the amusing miscommunications that can arise from poor or absent translation skills, but it definitely wasn't the last. Heck, I've had mistranslations even when everyone involved was speaking the same language. Small regional tweaks can make for big changes in meaning.

So who else has a good story about a bad translation?
 
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Siri Kirpal

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Sat Nam! (Literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

This isn't a mistranslation per se, but it does involve a cultural misunderstanding. When Mr. Siri was a teenager, his brother brought home a young man from Kenya who had come to the US to expand his education. (He ended up living with Mr. Siri and his family several years, but that's outside the story.) He'd been told that in America you must always eat everything on your plate. So...on the plane journey over (in the good old days when longer plane flights always included meals), when he received a tray that included the decoration of a little flower, he ate the flower.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal
 

Tazlima

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Sat Nam! (Literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

This isn't a mistranslation per se, but it does involve a cultural misunderstanding. When Mr. Siri was a teenager, his brother brought home a young man from Kenya who had come to the US to expand his education. (He ended up living with Mr. Siri and his family several years, but that's outside the story.) He'd been told that in America you must always eat everything on your plate. So...on the plane journey over (in the good old days when longer plane flights always included meals), when he received a tray that included the decoration of a little flower, he ate the flower.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal

Awwww, that's adorable!
 

RNJ

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We visited London and Dublin for about 10 days last year. We were waiting for the bus to take us to the Dublin airport. It was around 10am. A young man was at the bus stop. He was tall and thin, wearing a rather nice suit and holding a six pack of Budweiser under his arm. First, I thought it odd for an Irishman to be drinking Budweiser. So, I asked him where he was going. At first, I thought he said he was going to court. Naturally, I asked him if he was going to bribe the judge with the Budweiser. He looked a bit confused, and then clarified that he was going to the "course"; the race course. He was going to the horse races.

We had a good laugh together. I love the Irish!
 

Chase

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With a deaf older sister, I grew up signing. This is American Sign Language handshape for the letter "T":

Deaf_T.jpg


My uncle also used it to play "got your nose."

When I was on duty in rural Germany in the early '60s, youngsters gathered around soldiers to ask for "cowgoomy" (chewing gum). I played "got your nose on a little boy who ran screaming. His mother returned to stiffly inform me the sign meant the same as a raised middle finger. :e2paperba

My indoctrination to hearies misunderstanding deafie signs.
 

Elenitsa

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With a deaf older sister, I grew up signing. This is American Sign Language handshape for the letter "T":

Deaf_T.jpg


My uncle also used it to play "got your nose."

When I was on duty in rural Germany in the early '60s, youngsters gathered around soldiers to ask for "cowgoomy" (chewing gum). I played "got your nose on a little boy who ran screaming. His mother returned to stiffly inform me the sign meant the same as a raised middle finger. :e2paperba

My indoctrination to hearies misunderstanding deafie signs.

In Romanian it means the same :p Actually it's a penis :p Also a gesture to (obscenely) reply "Nothing" to someone who is asking you for a thing you don't have/ don't want to give. And in Greece you can't show five on your palm/ fingers because it's obscene too :p The same for V from Victory in Italy, especially in the South (cuckolded man's horns) :p
 

Siri Kirpal

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Sat Nam! (Literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

Not a travel story, but these obscene scenes are reminding me of the time I was in a group talking with some Punjabi friends. One of the ladies gave me some information. I repeated it to someone else in the Punjabi people's hearing and added, "I got it from the horse's mouth." The lady who'd given me the info smiled and winced at the same time. A couple of other Punjabi people listening in told me that to imply that a Punjabi woman is a horse is saying that she's someone men ride -- AKA a prostitute. I apologized profusely (and I don't even want to know how red my face must have turned). The lady did acknowledge that she did know the American saying and wasn't going to hold my faux pas against me.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal
 

Morning Rainbow

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Back when I lived in the Czech Republic, I had issues with the word "nó," which is a shortened slang term for "ano," which is Czech for "yes." Since I was new to speaking Czech, whenever someone asked me a question, I would instinctively answer in English. Many times I answered "no" in English and they thought I was saying "yes" in Czech. Fortunately, I never accidentally agreed to anything that could get me into trouble.

One of my Czech friends had the opposite problem when she lived in the U.S. She instinctively answered "nó" to questions and Americans thought she meant "no."
 

Tazlima

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Sat Nam! (Literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

Not a travel story, but these obscene scenes are reminding me of the time I was in a group talking with some Punjabi friends. One of the ladies gave me some information. I repeated it to someone else in the Punjabi people's hearing and added, "I got it from the horse's mouth." The lady who'd given me the info smiled and winced at the same time. A couple of other Punjabi people listening in told me that to imply that a Punjabi woman is a horse is saying that she's someone men ride -- AKA a prostitute. I apologized profusely (and I don't even want to know how red my face must have turned). The lady did acknowledge that she did know the American saying and wasn't going to hold my faux pas against me.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal

Ooh, I glad I learned this! In Italy "cavalla" (horse) is also slang for a woman, but there, it's kind of like calling someone a "fox" in English - not in the translation to "attractive/sexy," but that in that it's a comment on one's looks that has sexual undertones, but that can also be used in a less-sexual or non-sexual manner among friends.

A "cavalla" is Italian slang for a tall/broadly built women, although it can also have a secondary meaning in that it's someone men want to ride like a horse because she's attractive and enormous (with the emphasis on the latter).

I'm fairly tall for an American, and in Italy, where the average height is a good bit shorter, I'm practically a giantess, so I got the "cavalla" comment quite a lot back in the day. Good to know I need to be wary of the "horse" moniker in other languages.
 

Morning Rainbow

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I almost forgot the most ridiculous mistranslation I have ever come across.

When I was in Romania, I ate some absolutely delicious bread. (Actually, there were a lot of delicious breads in Romania, but I digress.) I wanted to learn how to bake it for my family for our holiday gatherings. I looked up a recipe, and there was one ingredient that I couldn’t quite translate. I looked up the word in the Romanian version of Wikipedia and then used Google Chrome to translate the entire page. The result was so hilarious that I copied and pasted it into a Word document to show it to people later. This is what it said:

“Shit or Turkish delight is one type of candy from Turkey made of sugar, flavorings and starch. In the home, this product is known as Turkish delight [delight] or (archaic) that shit delight, being a very popular throughout the Balkans. Shit has a consistency similar to jelly, but was stronger, stickier and more opaque. Furthermore, due to the very high sugar is much sweeter than most sweets, being closer in this respect sorbet than jelly. It is usually sold cut into small cubes (with sides of 2-3 cm), covered with powdered sugar so as not to stick to each other or by hand. Produced since the late fifteenth century, initially he was producing honey, molasses and flour. As sugar became cheaper, it replaced the honey and molasses in the composition. If at the beginning, shit was available only in the simplest variety (containing only sugar, starch and water), today one can buy in a variety of colors and flavors (the most popular being the lemons, oranges, cocoa and pistachios). Furthermore, there are varieties of sucks containing means pistachios, hazelnuts, walnuts or almonds, or coated with various other confectionery products such as nougats. In Romania was introduced in the eighteenth century, with Braga nougat and baklava, first through Phanariotes, traders from the Levant and Constantinople, and later became one of the characteristic products for fairs and fairs Wallachian century XVIII -XIX. Traditionally, in Romania and in the Balkans, shit is served after coffee with a glass of cold water. This tradition, however, is increasingly rare, shit is today served by yourself, with changing the culture of coffee. Moreover, shit was introduced in traditional Romanian cuisine - one of the recipes most commonly used by cake incorporates pieces of shit in the composition.”

And to top it all off, a caption that read: "Various kinds of shit in a coffee shop in Istanbul, birthplace of shit."

This is why you should never use Google to translate anything. I'm not even sure if the Romanian word "rahat" is slang for "shit," but Google sure thought it was.
 

Elenitsa

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I almost forgot the most ridiculous mistranslation I have ever come across.

When I was in Romania, I ate some absolutely delicious bread.

This is why you should never use Google to translate anything. I'm not even sure if the Romanian word "rahat" is slang for "shit," but Google sure thought it was.

Yes, "rahat" means Turkish delight (the proper definition) and it is also a mild slang for "shit" (as in... a thing you can still say in a somehow polite company if you are telling about somebody who doesn't clean their dogs' droppings upon a walk, or a thing someone had just avoided stepping into... or those who lie are called "shit-eaters" with using this word. Well, the PR officers get the same name...) Also using google translate, one of the buns/ cakes you ate was translated as "Cake with bullshit and raisins" :p

From the same requirements that the producers translate in English what's inside, because we are EU members: "pork drum" (yes, it is a pork speciality looking like this, and the name is written and pronounced the same like the one for drum, but... google translate beware!) There are more but I can't remember now.