Not only when translating to Spanish... this is a bad translation jewel...
Monday, October 20, 2008
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
That word doesn't exist ...
¿Necesidades que desaguan?
The text in English is "never needs draining". The first horror is the change of the word "need" (necesidad) from a verb (in English) to a noun (in the bad translation); as a result in the text in Spanish "draining" has shifted to be a characteristic of the noun "need". To make it more clear the English translation of "nunca necesidades que desaguan" would be "never needs that drains". Below we can find the word "Diseno" which doesn't exist in Spanish. "Diseño" is the word they should have used. To round up this magnificent piece of work we can find the phrase "Operación para ahorrar energía" as a translation of "Energy Saving Control", this translation is wrong since it fails in transmitting the idea in proper language use.
Horror: "El cromo plateó..."
Where can we start? The first thing to note here is the use of the word "plateó"; in this case it is used as a verb where in the English text "Chrome plated" it is used as an adjective. The next line is also a big mistake "inodoro conector" breaks the simple rule for Spanish language "First the noun then the adjective".Sadly the picture is blur and we can't explain what is going in the rest of the text.
Horror: "Coniga sobre línea...:
This is probably the result of an online translator. The word "coniga" doesn't even exist in Spanish. "Sobre linea" (note the lack of the 'tilde' in the letter 'i') is the worst possible translation for "online". In this case "Ordene sus fotos en línea" is the way to go...
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Let's play with this ball or with this stereo?
Another way of making mistakes when translating is choosing the wrong word even if the translation is right..... uhmmm.... how so? let's take this example, the word "play" can be translated in Spanish as "jugar" (as in to play a sport or a game) or "ejecutar"/"interpretar" (as in playing a guitar or playing a song) also as "reproductor" (as in "record player"); in the case we have here the right translation would be "Reproductor de música" because "Jugador de Música" just doesn't make sense at all.
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