Posts Tagged ‘documentation’
Cheap Translation Kills
Not all mistranslations mean the difference between life and death, but some do. Some cheap translations can actually kill. See the following examples from the article, "'Airline pulp' and bad translations that can crash a plane," by Globalization Group vice president Adam Wooten. ...a 2008 helicopter crash in France... was suspected to be the [...]
Avoid Copying and Pasting
Limiting the number of human touch points in a project will limit the possibilities of introducing human error. One way to limit the number of human touch points is to avoid copying and pasting text whenever possible. Sometimes it can not be avoided. However, one important way to limit copying and pasting is to work with and extract [...]
Hydraulic Rams
Unprofessional translators can really alter the meaning of a translation. Various reports indicate that a technical publication once translated the English words "hydraulic rams" into Russian as "wet sheep."
Translation Quality is in the Eye of the Beholder
People say "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" to indicate that beauty is subjective. Likewise, translation quality is in the eye of the beholder, and localization quality is also in the eye of the beholder. Some might ask if there is not just a single translation of any given text that is "the right one." No, there is not. You could give [...]
Motorcycle Translation Bloopers
A small scandal-that-never-really-was erupted when motorcycle racer Nicky Hayden's remarks were mistranslated last week. Hayden had commented that "it is a shame" (meaning "it is a pity") fellow racer Casey Stoner is leaving the Ducati team for the Honda team in 2011. However, his words were translated into Italian and then back into English as [...]
Tounge of Frog
The "Tounge of Frog" was a toy manufactured in Taiwan in the 1980s, poorly translated from Chinese to English, and sold in the United States. One of the best lines is "Never throw out the other person's head." These mistranslated product instructions have become an internet meme and are found below with typos included: Frog. If it is thrown [...]
Editing by a 2nd Linguist
This tip may seem very obvious to most. We certainly hope it does. Unfortunately, not everyone gets it, as evidenced by the fact that we know of companies who regularly request a exception to this rule and various language service providers that rarely follow it. So we are including this tip here for the benefit of those who are not yet [...]
Tootle Horn Melodiously, then with Vigor!
This blooper has actually been around since May of 1920 or earlier. However, many international business books and emails have reported that this Japanese-to-English translation blooper was seen within recent years in Tokyo rental car brochures. Clumsy English translations of Japanese traffic rules were brought back from Japan to the western [...]
Baseball Bloopers Lost in Translation
In Japan As baseball season begins in the United States this weekend, we are reminded that America's favorite pastime has seen its share of translation bloopers. When former US Major Leaguer Matt Franco was playing for a Japanese team called the Chiba Lotte Marines, he attended a team meeting on nutrition. There he had an experience much like [...]
