Embarrassing translation mistakes - why it's essential to use a native professional translator
POST YOUR COMMENT
- Fátima Stigliani
- I knew about a translator who mistranslated the following sentence: Take the drug twice a day with meals into Tomar a droga duas vezes ao dia com carne (Port/Brazil) He misread the word "meals" into "meat". The customer then asked: "and what about if the patient is found to be a veggie?"
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REPLY
- 18/11/2015
- Johanna Saunders
- I bought a hair straightener at the weekend, which the instructions (translated from Chinese) warn me never to use if my hair is "non-vaginable". I shudder to think!
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- 23/11/2015
- Lynda Stevens
- How about 'Silver Mist' for s Rolls Royce car. In German that means 'poo' or 'manure.' The Pinto car was all very well in many countries but in Portugal this word means that as a man you are - ahem - small....
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- 23/11/2015
- Sean
- Hi, Nice story, but I doubt the Pepsi slogan part. I live in Taiwan for decades and I'm sure it never happened here. The slogan was literally 'Pepsi, a new generation' in that commercial. I guess those myth came from some kind of fake internet story, and those ancestors might have been brought alive in mainland of China as far as I know.
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- 23/11/2015
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