# Lost in Translation



## baldilocks (Mar 7, 2010)

We all know how hilarious some mistranslations can be, especially when made by someone who, in good faith, has used one of those on-line translators.

We had an e-mail yesterday from someone who kept going on about the "hand-grenade". Now this "hand-grenade" was mentioned six times in a not very long message so it had to be something of importance. :confused2:

We enquired and it turned out to be "Caja Granada"
:clap2: 

*Anyone else come across some real howlers?
*


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## Guest (Mar 16, 2010)

"_Cola Cao_" = "tail" in San Sebastian, apparently. My favorite breakfast!


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## Guest (Mar 16, 2010)

And then there was the day I botched a vowel and told my boyfriend I liked tulip*e*nes.


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## Pesky Wesky (May 10, 2009)

An English teacher friend of mine got an email one day from a student saying 
_*I'm sorry I can't go to groin class.*_ (The teacher was quite relieved to hear that he wasn't going to have to give a groin class that day) Apart from rolling around laughing we couldn't work out  how come the student had managed to come up with groin for English, until I realised what he must have done...
inglés = English
ingle = groin 
plus Google translation and a careless student


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## JazII (Mar 11, 2010)

A male that I know used "embarazado" in the context of being embarrassed, since the object being discussed was another male I nearly choked with laughter ;-))


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## dunmovin (Dec 19, 2008)

once heard of an evil sod who told a visitor that to order a glass of beer, to ask for "concha, por favor" instead fo cana...he kept this up for a week before someone told the visitor what he was actually saying


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## SteveHall (Oct 17, 2008)

I was talking to an object of my lust from Chile about **** sur when the inevtiable happened. 

Steve hugely embarassed, Pilí hugely amused. Mmmm, if her English was as good as my Spanish she would have had the right to smirk. No justice 

"The person who speaks the best Spanish made the most mistakes" ....was a favourite saying of mine when I taught Spanish to expats.


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## JazII (Mar 11, 2010)

dunmovin said:


> once heard of an evil sod who told a visitor that to order a glass of beer, to ask for "concha, por favor" instead fo cana...he kept this up for a week before someone told the visitor what he was actually saying


Ok I might have a confession on that front too.....a long time ago when a friend wanted to know how to ask for some honey I told her to ask for "mierda de abejas"


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## JazII (Mar 11, 2010)

Here's another one......for a long time we used to order dos conas rather than dos conos....No wonder they smirked.......but nobody in the heladería ever corrected us.....instead somebody I know from Galicia explained LOL ;-))


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