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Lost in Translation Sixty Two

October 28, 2010
23:18 PM

Seen tonight in a restaurant in Languedoc- which kindly provided English translations of their offerings.

The Pizza on offer was entirely respectable in French ;

Fermiere : Nappage de creme et de tomate, emmincees de dinde, mais, poivrons et oignons

In English this read.

Farmers : Wife, topping of cream and toato, scilced thin by a turkey, mais let us add pepperonions

I should say that the Irish Countrywomans Association would have something to say about that.
I just plumped for the Romana.

Comments

  1. martine

    on October 29, 2010

    Great!!!!!!!!!!!

  2. Petra

    on October 29, 2010

    Oh Martin, that’s one of the funniest yet; am still squealing!

  3. Martin

    on October 29, 2010

    The thing is that it is a great Pizzaria with a waiter par excellence who handles about 60 customers on his own with great good humour.
    And you can see where Google translate (and a sloppy monolingual printer) let them down.
    The bit I like best (well after the image of a turkey finally getting to sclice up a farmers wife )is poivrons translated as let us .

  4. paul

    on October 29, 2010

    I cannot understand why commercial undertakings that provide translations don’t enploy postgrad students to check their works.

  5. Petra

    on October 29, 2010

    I suspect it just illustrates the endearing Gallic disdain for any language that’s not their own (and, consequently, for those ignoramusses who are willing to pay for French food but not for French lessons)…

The comments are closed.


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  Martin Dwyer
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