Summer always brings great opportunities for travel, especially in our internationally-minded industry. And along with those travels come some great vacation photos from colleagues! Here (reprinted with Jiri’s permission) is one that made me laugh out loud: former ATA President Jiri Stejskal having trouble getting any work done during his vacation to the Czech Republic, because…
In his blog entries about this photo, Jiri reports that the sign (at Karlstejn Castle near Prague) actually says Interpreting Prohibited in the original Czech, and is posted at tourist attractions so that non-Czech speakers have to book a (more expensive) tour for foreigners rather than having someone interpret the Czech tour for them. Anyone else out there with some amusing translation-themed vacation photos?
Italy is a good place to spot wonderful translations.
My favorite is from Museo del Duomo in Siena (taken some years ago):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8082645@N03/4809281626/
What a find, Jiri! That is priceless!
Hey there! I’m a Japanese-English translator.
Here is a crazy translation attempt I found in China. It has Chinese, Japanese, French, and English.
http://www.japannewbie.com/2010/04/09/you-should-lose-your-ability-to-reason/
This one is also extremely powerful.
http://chinanewbie.posterous.com/english-messed-up-mighty-powerful
If the quality of the automated translation is reflectied by the written one, the audiotour must be quite amusing.
Having said that, I just came accross Google’s new claim. They now translate your pet complaints 🙂 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3I24bSteJpw
Unfortunately, my own lastering of pig and donkey language does not enable me to verify the accuracy of their translation…
Too funny — Dagy and I are laughing as we speak. We collect translation mistakes, which get posted on our German-language blog, but we don’t have a funny translation-vacation 🙂 photo to share.
Hello Corinne,
Stumbled upon your site by happy accident. Keep blogging!
Just came across a good one, though it is not a picture. CAnadian police fined heavily for using google Translate 🙂
http://www.articlesbase.com/international-business-articles/canadian-police-pays-3000-per-day-for-relying-on-google-translate-2994095.html
Hello Corinne,
I took the following picture in a museum in Cologne. As I don’t speak German, I can’t say what’s written in the German section but it looks to me as there is already a problem between the English and French versions of the text!
http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/681/dsc01152v.jpg