Junta de Andalucía’s Fucked Translation 101: try plagiarism first

Lenox at The Entertainer Online picks up El Mundo’s report on the Junta de Andalucía’s new tourism portal. Developed at a cost of €5,400,000(!) by Telefónica(!), it was launched by the Andalusian president José Antonio Griñán at a massive junket with 500 guests and the baritone Carlos Álvarez (who I believe makes in the region…

Alicante restaurant serves fragmentation hand grenade for dessert

Having survived Liverpool, the intrepid Mr Harvey returns to Spain only to find himself menaced by pork lions, and worse. Our neighbourhood revolutionary proposes to visit this establishment, purchase 50 fragmentation hand grenades (incredibly cheap at €3.5), and call trading standards if they try any lousy scam, like serving pineapple.

Cervantes, prototype for el Cobrador del Frac?

Peter Harvey is suffering from that perennial Spanish problem–translation agencies that don’t pay the modest rates they promise. This blog enjoys dressing up but has no plans to become for the translation sector what el Cobrador del Frac is for the world at large: a debt collection agency which compensates for a deeply flawed legal…

Unicaja: “Now we speak the same language yours”

Andalusia’s largest financial institution, Unicaja, keeps its autochthonous customers happy by investing substantial sums in sponsoring local sports teams, and was thus unable to afford 50€ for a slogan-checker for the Brits, who are estimated to make up 70% of the clientele of this particular branch:

Fake story about a fake passport

The headline belongs to Josu at Malaprensa, who has the marvellous story of how Guus Hiddink’s comment in Bild that it was unfortunate that Mesut Özil had distinguished himself with a bad pass was translated in the Spanish press as Hiddink regretting a false passport having been required to enable him to play for Germany.…

Physically impossible entry

No 31 in this New York Times collection of strange street signs. My impression is that the Chinese are ahead, but it seems hard to criticise them for this: huge efforts have been made over the past decade to make a previously sternly monolingual country more accessible to foreigners; the effort is laudable and the…