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Chinese Restaurant Suffers Large Translation Error
linuxwrangler writes "Preparing for English-speaking visitors, a restaurant in China recently ran its name through an online translator, took the result, then purchased and mounted a large sign displaying the English version of their name: Translate Server Error." This one has been around for a couple of weeks but it's destined to become a classic.
I can't wait to read the fortune cookies.
What would jesus do.. with open source software?
The original title of this book was 'Jimmy James, Capitalist Lion Tamer' but I see now that it's... 'Jimmy James, Macho Business Donkey Wrestler'... you know what it is... I had the book translated in to Japanese then back in again into English. Macho Business Donkey Wrestler... well there you go... it's got kind of a ring to it don't it? Anyway, I wanted to read from chapter three... which is the story of my first rise to financial prominence... I had a small house of brokerage on Wall Street... many days no business come to my hut... my hut... but Jimmy has fear? A thousand times no. I never doubted myself for a minute for I knew that my monkey strong bowels were girded with strength like the loins of a dragon ribboned with fat and the opulence of buffalo... dung. ...Glorious sunset of my heart was fading. Soon the super karate monkey death car would park in my space. But Jimmy has fancy plans... and pants to match. The monkey clown horrible karate round and yummy like cute small baby chick would beat the donkey.
The grandmother of an extremely attractive young lady in Toronto used Chinese characters in a design she embroidered on one of the girl's shirts. Somebody in Chinatown eventually pointed out to her that the characters said, "This dish is inexpensive but delicious."
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
It is not a gaff like, Chevy Nova in South America, No va meaning No go, but that could be truth in advertising. Or, "It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken" being translated into, "It takes a hard man to make a chicken aroused."
Some others:
"It won't leak in your pocket and embarrass you." translating into "It won't leak in your pocket and make you pregnant."
Pepsi's "Come Alive With the Pepsi Generation" translated into "Pepsi Brings Your Ancestors Back From the Grave" in Chinese.
The Coca-Cola name in China was first read as "Kekoukela", meaning "Bite the Wax Tadpole"
Fight Spammers!
This, ladies and gentlemen, is why you should also internationalise your error messages.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Another classic that you may or may not have heard of is "fuck goods".
Due to simplification of Chinese characters, the words "dry" and a "do" merged into one single simplified Chinese character. In slang, "do" can mean copulation. The correct translation is "dried goods". You can see the rest yourself.
Don't quote me on this.
+1 Funny to the first one who can use DNS cache poisoning to trick a Beijing restaurant into calling itself the "Free Tibet Cafe".
Oh, and if you live in San Diego and you come to a car dealership where they give you a "Leash Agreement" instead of a Lease one, tell them I said hi!
Give Kashyyyk back to the Wookies
I have this impression of China that everything there is done as cheaply as possible without regard to safety or double checking, etc. It reminds me of one of my favorite blog posts showing the difference between the way the Japanese and the Chinese refuel a plane. Notice that the Chinese guy is starting the siphoning of the fuel with his mouth. The owners of this restaurant were too cheap to pay some English-speaking Chinese kid a hundred yuan to translate it for them. At least we get some laughs out of it.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
This also probably worked to their advantage - now how many people outside of China know about this restaurant? I figure people would at least want to go there to take a picture in front of the sign or whatnot.
(and I do), I'm sure you'll appreciate
http:://www.engrish.com
I record my sleeptalking
I have a street map of Kyoto with a legend translating the Japanese for "WC" into English - "Cornhole Palace".
Something tells me that wasn't entirely accidental.
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
Hint: It begins with sucking and ends with cock :-)
I record my sleeptalking
Its funny; things just don't translate cleanly.
take:
Buck a scoop Chinese food.
babel it and you get:
é'æS--ç"äåoeäé£Yç©
babel it again and you get:
Resists stubbornly wooden scoop Chinese food
yummy.
Unix, an obscure operating system developed by bored researchers in an attempt to get a better game playing experience.
That is pretty funny, but without the server error I've found chinese translators (traditional and simplified han) to work better than most languages. I was going to find a funny mistranslation, but my systran translator worked flawlessly. The worst I could find with my original subject line, "that was pretty funny," was, "that was quite funny."
The situation is worse with longer or more complex sentences and turns of phrase, but I was surprised at the level of sophistication of modern machine translation. This story should really be making fun of whatever server the translator was running on rather than the cafe owner or the translator itself.
What I find interesting about printed chinese english is that it is often printed in the same typeface. Look at many of the inspection tags, instructions, or 'made in china' tags that you have on products laying about; chances are that they are all in an identical old-fashioned serif typeface. Can anyone tell us the story behind this generic 'english' typeface that I run into so often?
-b
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
http://www.hanzismatter.com/.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Snopes.com debunks the Chevy Nova myth and the Coke-tadpole story. I've never heard of the other two, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were bunk as well.
my chinese isn't good enough to confirm that it actually is a translation error...
for all i know, it's an accurate translation
The funny thing is that that site is blocked, at least in Shanghai!
The Chinese text on the banner (can1 ting1) is simply a generic term for "dining hall" or "cafeteria", which makes this even funnier.
just talked to someone in China (Xian), and he told me he couldn't get to it...
Get the rope.
Check out Language Log. They do not only have even funnier examples, but also try to analyze the source of the error, as well as translation problems in other languages. The latest installment in the series of Chinese-English mistranslations is The Sichuan's hair blood is prosperous, or check the whole category: Lost in Translation.
They also collect "Cupertinos", errors introduced by spelling checkers, or have you ever heard of US presidential candidates Barrack Abeam and John moccasin? It's a great log for anyone interested in language.
And it's not like this is only a problem going to English, we have committed some blunders, there are many stories how Pepsi's "Come alive, You're in the Pepsi Generation" translated to something in Chinese like "Pepsi will bring your ancestors back from the dead".
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Apparently some people intentionally buy and wear stuff like that. As anecdote I present the Baka Gainjin (Stupid Foreigner) t-shirt. I don't know how many they sold, but since after all these years they still sell it... :P
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/imaginepaolo/2691795861/in/pool-badtranslations/ This is all so funny. :D
http://www.danwei.org/trends_and_buzz/beijing_cleans_up_its_sign_tra.php Farewell Racist Park, we hardly knew ye.
sig free since 1993
... you may remember this incident involving some Israeli journalists translating a couple of questions into a terrible insult for the minister's mum ;=)
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For some perspective on the other side, the site Hanzi Smatter (run by a friend of the owner of engrish.com) has a great collection of equally high-quality use of Chinese (and Japanese and Korean) by westerners. The best part is that westerners really seem to like to use Hanzi/Kanji in tattoos; the result is a bit harder to fix than a gaffe in a manual or a sign. :)