Translation is not an exact science. Think about all the sayings we have in English that wouldn’t make sense to a foreign person who took them literally…
“Spend a penny” “Mad as a box of frogs” “Spanner in the works”
When translations go wrong the effects can be disastrous. A missed word, or even a single erroneous letter, can change the meaning of a sentence completely. I love reading French menus the staff have translated into English for this reason. “Grandmother’s balls with pistachio” or “warm goat dung on toast” anyone? You’d have thought a ski resort press office would have forked out for a proper translator, but apparently not – leading to my favourite translation mistake so far. Sainte Foy’s Winter 2016 English press pack had the resort’s tagline as:
The Sainte Foy spirit will impregnate you. Ski differently. You will never be the same.
If that isn’t doesn’t sound like a threat I don’t know what does. And, bless them, that was how they were trying to tempt English people to book a holiday in the resort.
rustikatie 