Posts Tagged ‘government’
Poll: Top Translation Blunders of 2010
Translation blunders made news throughout the year 2010. By translation blunders, we are not referring to urban legends like President John F. Kennedy's alleged slip-up saying "I am a jelly doughnut" - that never happened. Nor are we referring to Dave Barry's satirical claim, "The CEO of Toyota appears before a congressional committee and [...]
Machine Translation Gisting
99% of the time when companies request machine translation, they actually need high quality human translation. However, there are instances in which a quick and dirty machine translation can be very useful and appropriate. ...when users merely need to understand the "gist" of a document, machine translation can provide low-quality translations [...]
Israeli Journalists and a Dutch Diplomat
Machine translation is appropriate for some situations and very inappropriate for others, as explained in the article "Machine translation can bring blunders, successes in international business." In (one) instance, Israeli journalists nearly set off an international incident when they sent a list of machine-translated questions to a Dutch [...]
Execution Yard
Russian prisoners at Lincoln Prison in England received a pamphlet informing them about prison facilities, including an "execution yard." They were almost certainly relieved to learn that "execution yard" was actually an English-to-Russian mistranslation of "exercise yard." Nick Hardwick, Chief Inspector of Prisons, said, "This is an example [...]
Elections Won and Lost in Translation
Would you vote for the current dragonfly? That was the question posed to Spanish-speaking voters in Worcester, Massachusetts, according to Telegram.com. The ballot for the upcoming election omitted a single letter in a Spanish translation and consequently listed one candidate’s occupation as “current dragonfly” (“aguacil actual”) instead [...]
United Nations Interpreter Bloopers
United Nations interpreters are among the best in the world. However, UN interpreters work under very stressful circumstances and do not have the luxury of an editor to review words before they are spoken. Under such circumstances, UN interpreters are bound to make an occasional mistake. According to the BBC, one mistake actually resulted in a [...]
Conference Interpreters Work in Pairs
Conference interpreters should work in pairs so that they can switch off every 30 minutes and avoid interpreter fatigue as mentioned below in the video "A Day in the Life of a Translator/Interpreter." Interpreter fatigue is a very real issue. Studies have confirmed a very real decline in quality after 30 minutes of interpreting. This reality [...]
Bladder Disease Sign Translation in Welsh
Welsh speakers have been complaining for years about terrible public sign translations from English to Welsh. WalesOnline.co.uk reported that in 2006 one sign was translated from "Cyclists Dismount" in English to roughly "Bladder Disease Has Returned" in Welsh. For your enjoyment, here is another baffling public sign translation from English [...]
Election Ballot Translation Errors
Would you vote for the current dragonfly? That is the question being posed to Spanish-speaking voters in Worcester, Massachusetts, according to Telegram.com. The ballot for the upcoming election omitted a single letter in a Spanish translation and consequently listed one candidate's current occupation as current dragonfly ("aguacil actual") [...]
Jerusalem – There Is No Such City!
A few years ago, a phrase in a Jerusalem sightseeing brochure should have been translated from Hebrew to English as "Jerusalem - there is no city like it!" However, according to Israel's Maariv newspaper and many other news agencies that reported on the topic, the phrase was mistakenly translated as "Jerusalem - there is no such city!" This [...]
