In the past weeks I’ve seen a few translation goofs get a fair bit of press around the world and cause more than a little laughter.  While these aren’t on B2B websites, they’re still good reminders of the need to be involved in every step of the translation process and use knowledgeable translators working in their native language.  If you have any questions or aren’t sure about the work being done, it’s better to stop and ask the translator than to just go along, unsure what you’re getting.  The results could be more than a little embarrassing.

Without further ado…here are some great translation goofs.

Welsh road sign becomes an out of office reply

As the BBC reported in October, a road sign diverting traffic in Wales became someone’s out of office reply.  According to the story, the request to have the traffic-diverting message was emailed in.  A response was quickly received, in Welsh, and off they went to the presses.  Unfortunately, the reply read “I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated.”  Without direct contact with the translator, the non-Welsh speaker wouldn’t have any way to determine the accuracy of the “translation” provided.

Out of office reply road sign.

Mixed up Welsh translations aren’t new to Britain.  Cyclists were quite confused when they were warned of bladder inflammations (a translating tool probably confused “cyclists” with “cystitis”), and many were upset when a school’s sign inadvertently referred to the teaching staff as “wooden staves.”

Computer Says No

Machine translation can be awfully tempting, especially as online services improve.  However, unless you’re trying to create Babelfish gibberish on purpose, it’s best to stay very, very far away from these if you’re looking to produce publishable content.  This restaurant in China shows just one of the pitfalls that can happen (via BoingBoing):

What can happen if you don't know the language you're going for.

The well known “Engrish” on Asian restaurant menus is also commonly a pitfall of automated translations.

Research without the research

The venerable Max Plank Institute in Germany put out their latest volume the other week.  They were focusing on China, and wanted to put a classic Chinese poem on the cover.  Instead what they got, according to Language Log, was, well, an ad for an act that usually wouldn’t grace the cover of a research magazine.

We invite you to...what?

The Institiute issues a sheepish apology and sent out a new cover for the German-language edition of the journal, with a more relevant theme (a work by a respected Renaissance-era scholar).  They claim a German sinologist vetted the poem before publication, but it seems that anyone with a modicum of Chinese ability would be able to determine that the badly written characters were referring to more dubious pursuits.  Lesson learned: be really sure you know what content you’re getting back from the translator and that you’ve worked with them every step of the way.  Best be sure that your translator (or whoever else vets your content) is a native-speaker.

Don’t accidentally cause an international incident

Last year a group of Israeli journalists were invited to the Dutch foreign ministry to conduct an interview.  They used an online Hebrew-Dutch translator to produce this missive emailed to the Dutch Foreign Minister:

“”Helloh bud, Enclosed five of the questions in honor of the foreign minister: The mother your visit in Israel is a sleep to the favor or to the bed your mind on the conflict are Israeli Palestinian, and on relational Israel Holland”

Other questions included in the email:

“Why we did not heard on mutual visits of main the states of Israel and Holland, this is in the country of this?’”

And:

“What in your opinion needs to do opposite the awful the Iranian of Israel?”

The Dome of the Rock was also given as “bandages of the knitted domes.”

According to reports around the world, it seems that the one non-English speaking journalist invited on the trip decided to write the email and send it.  The Dutch threatened to cancel the trip and make a formal complaint over the insulting email, but the journalists admitted they were too embarrassed to take it anyway.

The root of the bad translations?  “As for the references to the foreign minister’s “mother” – the [Babylon website] had translated the Hebrew word for “if” (ha’im) as the similar word for mother (ha’ima). “

Poorly written or translated content can be a real detriment to a website.  It looks, and reads, as unprofessional and may drive potential customers away from the website and from makeing conversions. It seems that while many of these goofs had good intentions behind them (providing direction, meeting with a foreign leader, advertising), relying on machine translation or not working closely enough with the translators can lead to inadvertent disaster.  And quite a few laughs to readers in the target language.  And as an extra consideration: be sure you’re also writing in the correct target language.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 12th, 2008 at 3:18 pm and is filed under International Internet Marketing, International SEO, Website Content, translation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.