Sometimes translation may cause a lot of trouble even to experienced interpreters. There are around 6500 spoken languages in the world today, and a lot of people need translators consulting. People make a lot of mistakes because they keep forgetting it’s all about finding equivalent meanings. We often translate texts literally, and that almost always leads to a fail. Awareness of the topic that we want to explain is a very significant thing.
As you can see, there is no field free of translation mistakes. They happen in many various spheres, including big political games and can cause poor results. When World War II came to an end, the forces of the USA demanded Japan to surrender. Prime minister of Japan answered with “Mokusatsu” word which has two meanings: “to kill with silence” and “no comment”. He meant “no comment”, but it was misinterpreted and 80.000 people died as a result of bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
There are also cases of terrible effects of misinterpretation in a health service. In 2004 a few members of the hospital staff were sentenced with manslaughter. Because of a mistranslation of booklets instructions, staff miscalculated radiation doses and treated inappropriately almost 500 cancer patients. It resulted in the death of 7 of them.
A bad translation is not always dangerous, usually it is awkward and even funny. Pepsi slogan “Come alive with Pepsi” was translated in China as “bringing your dead ancestors back to life” which did not not necessarily encourage to buy the product.
One of the funniest situations happened when JFK asked Joseph Luns, the Minister of Foreigh Affairs from the Netherlands, about his hobby. He answered “I fok horses” because Dutch word “fokken” means “to breed” and that’s what he was trying to say. Surprised JFK only replied “Pardon?” and Luns happily answered “Yes, parden!” because that in Dutch means “horses”.
As you can see, bad translations might cause a lot of problematic situations. Sometimes they are funny, but they can as well be dangerous and dramatic. If you make sure that your translated texts are always 100% correct you will for sure avoid a lot of embarrassment and troubles. Take a look at the infographic prepared by a Lighthouse team and see examples of translations that went wrong.
(Click on the image for full view)
