You’re story about the “bicho” is good. In spanish, every country sort of has their own way of saying things. In America, we learn mexican spanish but when I was in spain, I found there was a huge difference in slang, pronunciation, and speaking style.

ps- you are in new york? I’m there next weekend. Are you free friday for lunch? shoot me an e-mail.

Thanks for your comment and for the link– those are some fantastic terrible translations!

In terms of funny translations, I’ve been collecting some at a page on bad translation pictures.

This is sort of related – one thing I’ve noticed in travel writing about Canada is the authors’ tendencies to completely misappropriate local expressions. I’ve lost count of the travel stories I’ve seen about Montreal or Quebec City that throw in a ‘Je Me Souviens’ or ‘Vive le Quebec Libre’ – presumably more out of a desire for ‘local colour’ and some ‘Francophone flavour’ than out of a genuine sense of solidarity with Quebec’s separatists. As outsiders, they most often have no idea of the political connotations of the little phrases and slogans they toss in to their stories or use to make cute headlines. Like the translation issue, it speaks to a lack of cultural knowledge about a place…

Yes, I read lots of criticisms about that post. I’m not sure what the process was for gathering the translations, but your comment raises an important issue that we didn’t address in this post: Even if someone seeking a translation requests a native speaker (which is more often the case than not), the native speaker may not translate correctly, may not spell correctly, etc. Just as there are English speakers who are terrible spellers, the same is true of people who speak other languages, though people seeking translations somehow fail to consider this. Just because someone speaks the target language doesn’t mean he or she is necessarily equipped to translate well.

Francisco just told me an interesting story. He heard that a guy in Miami who was suspected of dealing drugs had his phone tapped. A friend–who was not at all involved in drugs–was using the suspect’s phone and mentioned that he couldn’t go to a party because he didn’t have a “kilo.” He ended up getting arrested and doing time when he had nothing to do with drugs. Why? Because “kilo” is slang for “money” in Cuba. “Ni un kilo”= “not a cent.” Now someone–even a fluent Spanish speaker–listening to that conversation could (and did) testify that kilo means kilo. But it also means something else.

When I was a social worker, I had the caseload of Spanish speaking clients. One day, during group therapy, a client from Ecuador told me that he had a “bicho” in his stomach– a bug. But for other Spanish speakers in the group from other countries found the word offensive because “bicho” means penis in some Spanish speaking countries. There are lots of words like this, including the words for cake, sandwich, woman, father/mother, etc.

This is why I LOVE Spanish!