A small collection of translations that didn't quite make the grade.
It's okay to cry laugh.
Every one of these was real copy, written in earnest, published in public. They are delightful — and they are also exactly the kind of thing we work very hard to keep out of our clients' communications.
Photos of the actual signs and pieces are not included, to protect the innocent.
— Margo
Read the translations first. The explanations can wait.
For those wonderingThe verb agostar means "to wither." In the first person it becomes agosto — which is also the month of August. The translator picked the wrong one.
For those wonderingA word-for-word translator read "stand-offish" as "stand of fish," and sent the great American novelist straight to the seafood aisle.
For those wonderingRemisiones, in Spanish, are traffic citations. Travelers who needed the ticket counter were cheerfully directed toward the fines counter instead.
For those wonderingThe Spanish for "sciatic" is ciático. Asiático means "Asian." One vowel off, and the practitioner is suddenly offering a very different specialty.
For those wonderingGorda is technically "chubby," but in Spanish it's a term of endearment — closer to "love" or "dear." Translated by software, a sweet nothing becomes a rotten insult.
For those wonderingThe coworker heard "tengo mala la camioneta" — my truck's acting up. But mal de camioneta is a Spanish idiom for, well… stomach trouble. Still not sure what the boss thought.
Or: even when it's right, it isn't.
In my senior year of high school in Guatemala, I became friends with a girl from Colorado. Jennifer was doing her darnedest to learn Spanish.
One day, our friend group went out for lunch. Afterward, as we were gathering our things to leave, she leaned over.
"So, I have a question. How come you guys always say I eat. I ate. when we're leaving a meal?"
I looked at her, puzzled. "What? I don't think we do."
And then, "Oh."
Jennifer translated it correctly, word by word. She still missed it entirely. Without context, without the culture that tells you whether it was a great meal or a grammar drill, the translation is right, and also wrong.
This is the work. Carrying not just the words, but knowing when even a correct translation isn't right.
We exist to keep this from happening with your content.
If your project needs a deep understanding of the source and target languages — and the cultures who speak them — we should talk.
Let's talk → margo@dannemillerassociates.com— Fin. —