translation pearls?

Question

Anyone out there with some good translation pearls. I have a few but they are difficult to find but sooooooo much fun!

Answer 1

Here's a few to add to your collection:

In a Tokyo bar: Special cocktails for ladies with nuts.
Outside Hong Kong tailors: Ladies may have a fit upstairs.
In a Bangkok dry cleaners: Drop your trousers here for best results.
In a Copenhagen airline office: We take your bags and send them in all directions.
In a Rome laundry: Ladies, leave your clothes here and spend the afternoon having a good time.
An advertisement by a Hong Kong dentist: Teeth extracted by thge latest methodists.
On the door of a Moscow hotel room: If this is your first visit to the USSR you are welcome to it.And in the Moscow hotel lobby opposite a Russian Orthodox monastery: You are welcome to visit the cemetery where famous Russian and Soviet composers, artists and writers are buried daily except Thursday.
In a Norwegian cocktail lounge: Ladies are requested not to have children in the bar.
In a Bangkok temple: It is forbidden to enter a woman even a foreigner if dressed as a man.
A scandinavian vacuum cleaner manufacturer used the following in its American advertising campaign: "Nothing sucks like an ......"
The US car maker was not aware that when they launched the Nova small saloon in South America that "No va" means "It doesn't go' in Spanish.
Someone introduced a toothpaste in France called Cue - the name of a notorious porno journal.
An American T-shirt maker in Miami printed shirts for the Pope's visit to South America. Instead of "I saw the Pope" (el Papa), the shirts read "I saw the potato (la papa).

Answer 2

Searched for this one and came up with the same list as in the 80's.
Love to see the answer's you get!
I can only come up with the trade name for those oversized toilet paper holders. In a German service station: 'Big Willy'. Big Wheely?

It's not a translation, but porta-loos in Switzerland have a sticker on them: 'Je suis à louer,' which to me seems self-evident.

The one about the vodka is from Naom Chomsky and is an example of computer translation way back in the 60s.
If you just want computer miss-translations, go to Babelfish.
While proof reading a technical document on computer diagnostics for the automobile industry I came across 'abbreviated conclusion'. I referred back to the German text and found 'Kurzschluss' - kurz-short, schluss-end, the word actually means 'short-circuit'.

Answer 3

There are some classics in Richard Lederer's Anguished English and More Anguished English, such as "ladies are requested not to have children in bar." and, my favorite, "when passenger of foot hove in view, toodle him. Toodle him melodiously at first and, if he move not quickly, toodle him with vigor."
Of course, there are the students I had who translated the seasons of spring and fall into the French words "ressort" (like a watchspring) and "chute" like a waterfall or slide...

Answer 4

I don't have the exact phrase, but I remember someone
tried to translate "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak"
into Russian and the last part came out as "the meat
is spoiled".

Answer 5

I have one. A translation tool rendered "manejando fondos de clientes" (I think this was the original, but I'm guessing) in connection with a very respectable institutional investor which purported to be "managing clients' funds" as "handling clients' bottoms".

Answer 6

There is a fashion in France to use English words in naming commercial processes, you can see 'le dry-cleaning' or be invited to 'le cocktail'

There is a shop in Boulogne sur Mer selling running shoes football boots etc called:-

The Athlete's Foot'

Which is sort of sweet don't you think?

Answer 7

I remember the one Steiner 17 mentioned; the first part was "the vodka is good".

Answer 8

"Chicken roasted on spit" - in a menu in a tavern.

Answer 9

what about Motie