World 0.1 – When the Translator is the Dumb One

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This is the first entry in my “Hall of Shame” of particularly embarrassing translation and internationalization mistakes. One might argue that this sort of post is somehow mean-spirited and it certainly is, but I think it's also a good way both to raise awareness about the challenges of language translation and to have a good laugh.

In this series of posts, we are going to demonstrate the five most basic rules of translation:

Never give a moron a dictionary.
Even if you are not a moron, always make sure you use your brain when working with a dictionary.
One word is not necessarily used the same way in different languages – even if the dictionary says so.
Most people believe that a mistranslation slightly shifts or obscures the meaning of the original sentence – which may well be the case – but, probably even more often, it ends up meaning the exact opposite.
As a translator, whenever you come across a statement that appears to be particularly odd, funny or stupid, before jumping to conclusions, it's worth checking whether it is not you who simply did not get it.

Our first example is taken from Swiss weekly “Die Weltwoche” which usually runs a series of funny or otherwise memorable quotations of some public persona on its last page. Two months, as part of this feature, it published a collection of “bushisms”. One of them appears to have been along the lines of intelligence playing an important role in the war on terror – but I am just guessing, based on the rather odd German translation:

Intelligenz ist ein wichtiger Teil im Kampf gegen die Terroristen.

So, what's wrong with that translation? As my English readers will confirm, “intelligence” when used in the context of war usually means “information obtained by intelligence services such as the CIA” rather than intelligence as in “IQ” or “cleverness”. In German, however, it only has the latter meaning.

Therefore, a perfectly reasonable statement – intelligence is an important element in the war on terror – ends up meaning something completely different when translated literally – it's important to be clever in the war on terror – an assertion that while certainly true, seems a bit dull and self-evident.

This also goes to show how the translator's expectations and prejudices can induce mistranslations – in this case the stereotype of George W. Bush's alleged tendency to uttering nonsensical statements. I suspect if these words had been written by, say, a professor at Harvard university, the German translator would have tried harder to make sense of the English sentence and would probably have found the correct meaning.

Don't get me wrong, I am not horribly pro-Bush – he is a politician with whom, as with most politicians, I sometimes find myself in agreement and quite often I don't. However, whatever your personal opinion on his policies, you will agree that making somebody look stupid by mistranslating his or her remarks, though unintendedly, is a bit – well – stupid.

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Categories: Language and Translation

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