It has been said that the most interesting aspect of translation is mistranslation — or, to put it another way, translation only gets noticed when it goes wrong. Everyone has their mistranslation stories, and there are now new ways in which AI-assisted translations can generate a laugh.
I thought I would collect a few favourites, and do a little series. Since I am currently in Spain, I’ll offer a couple from last week’s trip across the north of that country.
The first comes from a packet of potato crisps (called ‘chips’, with a long ‘ee’ sound in Spanish).
The packet informs us in Spanish that they were ‘fritas en sarten’ — which suggests that the crisps (or chips) were fried in a pan (‘sartén’ is a frying pan or skillet). This is unlikely to be true, since hand-cooking millions of potato slices in an individual frying pan could not be a cost-effective way of producing hundreds of thousands of packets of crisps. Surely they would have been cooked in a single, industrial-sized container?
But the translation is ‘chips in frying pan’ which suggests not so much that the things were cooked in a particular way, but that they are to be purchased along with the item in which they were allegedly fried. Confusing.
The second of today’s examples of mistranslation was taped to the window of a service station diner on the motorway between Bilbao and San Sebastian. ‘Local’ in this context might be translated as ‘the premises’, i.e. the shop or restaurant outside of which Mrs Blanco and I were seated. It might have read read, ‘Food not purchased from these premises should not be consumed here’ or some such, but certainly not the following, which suggests the promotion of locally-produced foodstuffs:
The Welsh language, when I began learning it, was almost publicly invisible. I began my journey to fluency at the tail-end of a costly (but non-violent) battle for bilingual signage. I carried with me everywhere a bundle of gum-backed ‘CYMRAEG!’ protest stickers; they should have had an obverse text ‘throw me out, violently if it pleases you’.
But now Welsh has its rightful public face and can be seen even in the signage of the commercial sector….
But respect for the language is not so easily won and weekly one sees new mistranslations betraying a diffidence, even an arrogant disregard, for getting it right.
Road signs are invariably incorrect and just make no sense (Deviant Traffic for Diversion) even offering a choice self-contradictory instructions, (such as chwith (left) for the English ‘Turn right’).
The most notorious example I recall (used to get a laugh in the English media) was a place name sign rendered into Welsh as something like ‘I’m on holiday at present; urgent translations should be referred to…’
One encounter that sticks in my craw, mostly on account of Tesco’s doing nothing in response to my (and others’, I’m sure) well-meant alerts read: ‘Cereals’ in English and ‘Scabfood’ in Welsh, on account of lax proofreading (Grawnfwyd good, Crawnfwyd bad).
I did not forsee that machine translation into Welsh would advance so far, so soon. But it’s infelicities and obscurations are seen everywhere ‘official’ documents are produced in the obligatory bilingual format.
However, I can rejoice at having never entirely used my stock of yellow stickers, now faded and the gum gone dark and brittle. I can even enjoy, with a wry smile, hearing the Wales-bound train announced in Welsh by Eryl, on the platform at Reading!
Diolch yn fawr, Marc. I appreciate your insights, as ever!