Translation Errors

Malaysian Defence Awkward Translation

by Richard Kazandjian January 30, 2012 Translation

Last week, the Malaysian Ministry of Defense posted an English translation of its dress code for employees on its web site. Unfortunately, it appears that they didn’t make arrangements to have the translation work done by a competent translator. The results were predictably hilarious and awkward. Some of the issues stemmed from simply atrocious grammar. [...]

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Original‎ Chinese Translation of “Colombiana”‎

by Richard Kazandjian September 7, 2011 Entertainment

The distributors of the action movie Colombiana, which stars Zoe Saldana as a female assassin, ran into a bit of a hurdle when they tried to get the movie approved for distribution in Hong Kong. The problem? An unintentional double entendre in the movie’s original Mandarin title, “Hei-lan-jiao,” which means “Black Orchid Beauty.” Unfortunately, in [...]

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Bloomberg’s Warnings Lost in Translation

by Richard Kazandjian August 31, 2011 Translation Errors

New York City has had one heck of a week. First, a mild earthquake shook the city. Then, just a few days later, Hurricane Irene blew in from the Caribbean. Luckily, the city dodged a bullet when the storm weakened before it struck land. As New York breathed a sigh of relief and began to [...]

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Mistranslation Confuses Italian Youth

by Richard Brooks April 27, 2011 Translation Errors

A language translation error in the Italian edition of a Catholic book aimed at young people made it look like the Vatican had changed its mind about birth control, reversing centuries of church policy. The book had to be temporarily pulled from the shelves while the publishers corrected the error, lest young Italian Catholic couples [...]

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Translation Errors In Free Trade Agreement

by Caroline Mikolajczyk March 16, 2011 Translation Errors

A new free trade agreement sparked a controversy in South Korea after Korean lawyer Song Ki-ho uncovered numerous translation errors and discrepancies between the English language version the Korean one.

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Top 10 Asian English Translation Failures

by Caroline Mikolajczyk March 11, 2011 Translation Errors

Small Asian businesses often don’t have the resources to get a proper translator and rely on machine translation instead…discover the funny outcomes!

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Translate your Brand Name in Chinese

by Caroline Mikolajczyk March 8, 2011 Translation Errors

For companies looking to expand into Asia, one of the hardest steps is choosing the right name. Chinese in particular lends itself to plays on words, and it’s common for names to have multiple meanings that can either help a brand or damage it.

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Lincoln Prison Translation Fail

by Richard Brooks November 30, 2010 Translation Errors

A translator at Lincoln Prison made an unfortunate error in translating a prisoner handbook for Russian speaking prisoners, translating “exercise yard” as “execution yard.” Read more now!

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British Colombian Mounties Remove Google Translate From Website

by Richard Brooks August 6, 2010 Machine Translation

The debate over machine-produced versus human translation took the British Colombian division of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police by surprise, according to this article in the Vancouver Sun.

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