Funny language translations we see on the web

When you read foreign websites and see how different languages translate and understand words and phrases. One example one of my favorite subtle ‘lost in translation’ things I see in Poland is ‘zapraszamy’. Which means ‘we invite you’. So when Poles translate their websites or write a marketing letter, I see something like, ‘we invite you to our store to buy things’. I think of an invitation is more like, we invite you to dinner, or to a party, not to spend money. We invite you to spend 10,000 dollars in our store. Or in German I have seen people trying to sell a German copy of ‘Lord of the Rings’ by Tolkien translated as ‘Gentlemen of the rings’. Language translation on the web are often amusing. The worst is when people use electronic language translators. It comes out very crazy, but useful in a pinch if you need to write someone from another country and you have no knowledge of their language, on chat for example. Its fun to compare translated text and see how language is really an abstraction, with meaning that cannot be perfectly translated.

Tags: online translation