I posted to a light-hearted blog called Fucked Translation over on Blogger from 2007 to 2016, when I was often in Barcelona. Its original subtitle was “What happens when Spanish institutions and businesses give translation contracts to relatives or to some guy in a bar who once went to London and only charges 0.05€/word.” I never actually did much Spanish-English translation (most of my work is from Dutch, French and German) but I was intrigued and amused by the hubristic Spanish belief, then common, that nepotism and quality went hand in hand, and by the nemeses that inevitably followed.
El Espíritu del Sur is a specialist music promotor which doesn’t know the English names for common musical instruments and doesn’t think it’s worth paying someone to find out. And so we may enjoy gems like viola (es) -> he violates (en): BALANESCU QUARTET. The project that we propose is ” Quartet Programme” in that…
Oh dear. The translation of this memo by the Spanish National Competition Commission is actually pretty good, so I suspect there’s some revenge scenario at work here.
MurciaMarketing has a photo of the curious sign that greets the hoards of designers and suppliers of theatrical vestments disembarking hourly at Murcia Airport, but no one else: (Thanks Transblawg.)
Lenox has scanned the Guardia Civil’s English translation of a crime report form. I particularly liked the confusion of first person singular verb forms and masculine nouns. So objeto -> “I object” instead of “object”.
Foreigners may know what a chiringuito is, but they’re unlikely to preferentially associate rape with monk fish. Our excellent correspondent has suggested that a french-letter machine in the bathroom of this Mojácar hostelry might also help.
A bit off-territory (Salmiya sounds like Kuwait), but too good to miss. Although … perhaps it is after all a chicken, and not a kitchen–a friend in Venezuela had a bullock sacrificed to celebrate his move, and I can quite easily imagine Arabian developers giving away a free chicken with every flat. (Thanks to MM)
Übersetzungsfehler deals with a variety of language combinations and is altogether more sober than this site. As is frequently the case on German websites, the legal notice deserves a trophy of some kind.
Thanks to our good friend, Anon of Andalusia, for this excerpt from the requirements for those wishing to participate in public exams in order to become a teacher (bolds and caps original): Topic 11: LEXICAL AND SEMANTIC FIELDS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. LEXIS WHICH IS NECESSARY FOR SOCIALIZATION, INFORMATION AND THE EXPRESSION OF ATTITUDES. TYPOLOGY…