I have a friend (no, really) who works for a large translating company, she sent me the following screenshot today. If you’re going to translate something from English to German, get a German native speaker to do it and if you want something translated from German to English, I charge very reasonable rates.
German Word For Today: “schliessen” - to close
Song playing as this was published: PJ Harvey - “Angelene”
Hmm, reminds me of the flyers produced here in Lüneburg by the Irish pub to promote Karaoke night and drink specials.
It was the “close window” button that I liked the best - google language tools probably did the rest.
Hilarious!
Let me jump out that close window before you close it…
OK, that’s funny
And to think someone actually got paid for that. Very nice!
I suggested they should use it as part of their advertising campaign…..
You know, for those of us who aren’t completely fluent in Deutsch, a translation (again!) wouldn’t be completely remiss
We had a conversation about that very subject (translation) at Casa Haddock.
That’s lovely reading. Was it also on your site that I read the pub sign in England welcoming football fans from around the world and the German rendition had the word ‘Ventilator’ in it? Marvellous! Actually, I translate myself too and half look forward to the day when computers will be able to do it properly so I have to force myself to get some other job…
I used to love listening to foreigners speaking German and all the little nuances that you could here with accent and direct translation of idioms and stuff. Morning hours has gold in the mouth as opposed to Der frühe Vögel fängt sich das Würm.
Of course much of this can be explained by translation services. If you actually put the early bird catches the worm into Bablefish you get der frühe Vogel verfängt sich die Endlosschraube, correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t think continuous screws quite has the same imagery!
Red Baron: Early morning continuous screwing - all this time I thought it was spam e-mail and now I know it was just badly translated idioms.. Pfff
BiB: It could well have been, if not this website, then a previous incarnation…… It was on the outside of a pub in Liverpool
Sin: It’s all horrible but centres around the idea that there are (at least) two meanings for close - close as in “nearby” and close as in the verb “to close”a a door, say.
Mrs Haddock does translation in her job (she is German) - I get to help/consult/whatever….and some stuff just doesn’t translate
“Early morning continuous screwing” Yes please.
i do get your occasional yahoo msgs. but as for text msgs… i did get a couple bout 10 days ago.. none since.
got your mail.. have replied.
and i just DONT know how to reach your phone. maybe you should give it a whirl.
I still don’t get it - but I don’t speak German.
I did once see on a restaurant menu in Turkey the appetising dish ‘green piss soup’. Guess it should have been ‘green pea(s) soup’, but I didn’t order it just in case…
Sandy: It’s not funny, just an awfully wrong translation. Green piss soup on the other hand is amusing (although - and I generally like Turkish food - it could be very, very wrong as well).