Wolfestone Translation Blog

Accepting immigration and cultural diversity in our communities hasn’t always come easily for us Brits.  The subject has made for controversy, debates and arguments across the political and social spectrum and many laws have come and gone with regards to immigrants and their place in British communities.  What is often forgotten is that cultural diversity in Britain enriches society across areas including our social, cultural, and professional lives.

For example, the influx of Polish workers to the UK has caused small businesses to set up and flourish, there’s a bigger demand now for, say, Polish food than there was in the 90s.

Khalid’s a Kurdish refugee. But he’s named his supermarket after Poland’s capital city. And he’s selling Polish food. He simply spotted a gap in the market. And he’s very happy here.

Khalid’s one of several Kurdish businessmen targeting Polish migrant workers. At Mohammed Ibrahim’s barbers the signs are Polish. But the shop’s called Halabja, the city in which Saddam Hussein gassed thousands of Kurds and where Mohammed used to live. Mohammed’s married to a Pole.

Many businesses and large corporations now have to translate many of their official documents, such as manuals and health and safety documents, into Polish due to the increasing number of Polish workers here in the UK.

The food that we eat, the music that we listen to, and the clothes that we wear have all been influenced by different cultures coming into Britain. Foreign foods, for example, are part of an average British diet. One of Britain’s favourite dishes is Indian, that being all the varieties of curry. Britons have enjoyed curry for a surprisingly long time – the first curry on a menu was in 1773!

Even English is based on the languages spoken by Anglo-Saxons, Scandinavian Vikings and Norman French invaders, with words added from the languages of other immigrants over the years!

In Britain today there is an estimated ‘ethnic minority’ population of just over 4 million. We live in a country rich in cultural heritage; but the value in this diversity is sometimes not fully seen or understood.

Immigration used to be a product of Britain’s colonial links. First, migrant workers came from all parts of the Empire, from Pakistan to the Caribbean. Then asylum seekers came from countries like Zimbabwe and Iraq.

Valuing our diverse culture in Britain today is all about understanding and respecting other people’s beliefs and ways of life (as we would expect others to respect ours). It is about supporting individuals in keeping their cultural traditions alive and appreciating the fact that all these different cultural traditions will enrich British life both today and in the future.

http://www.mylearning.org/jpage.asp?jpageid=2022&journeyid=441

http://www.bbc.co.uk/nottingham/content/articles/2008/10/13/radford_road_hyson_green_feature.shtml

Some mistranslations are fatal, some are just funny translations. Translations, both oral and written, are not always as accurate and faithful as they should be. But let’s look on the bright side of things now.

They say that Cinderella from a well-known fairy tale received her glass slippers as a result of a translation error. It is claimed that in the original French story Cinderella’s slippers were made of vair (the fur of the grey squirrel). A translator supposedly confused this word with verre (glass) thus endowing Cinderella with beautiful glass slippers (by the way, they are crystal in the Russian version of the fairy tale).

Well, forget the fairy-tale slippers. Inaccurate translations sometimes result in much more tangible gifts. So partly thanks to an interpreter’s error, the Russian Federation agreed to donate three Siberian tigers (the endangered species) to South Korea. During a visit of an official Russian delegation to South Korea, Koreans told Russian officials about their great interest in Siberian tigers. However, the interpreter mistranslated those words and asked if Russia was willing to donate the tigers. As a result, Russia agreed to make that valuable gift.

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Please “Slip and Fall Down Carefully” and “Show Mercy to the Slender Grass.” The unique mix of Chinese and English known as “Chinglish” produces many funny translations. Here is a handful of funny translations picked up form The China Daily:

Subway signs:
“Fleeing for your life” (the sign tells how to escape in the event of an emergency)
“Your mobile phone on your waist seems like the gifts for thieves”
“Be careful with the bags you take, with more safety in chest”
“If you are stolen, call the police at once”

A restaurant menu:
“The ovary and digestive gland of a crab digs up the cabbage”
“Royal Worshipped Beef”
“Ideas’ powder” (that is “Italian spaghetti”)
“Choke of cucumber”

One can find funny translations not only in a Chinese menu (or Ukrainian, or Spanish, or Finnish, etc), but on pages of a reliable news agency as well. Thus, Reuters’ translators bravely mistranslated the German word schwanz as penis (however, the correct translation in that case was tail). As a result, Reuters published a remarkable article about an unlucky Lego giraffe model that stood at the entrance to the Lego Discovery Center with its manhood being regularly stolen. Readers were informed that it was a popular souvenir and that the Lego Discovery Center was erecting a “metal construction to protect the giraffe’s genitalia.” In that way, the tail turned into penis and the whole story was good for a laugh.

It turned out that there is an institution named

Piece of advice on studying of productive forces of Ministry of Economics of Russian Federation and RAN

in the organizational structure of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Employees with mysterious prefixes des and ces work on the staff of this institution. By the way, an unintelligible abbreviation RAN also intrigues.

Original Russian pages lift a cloud of mystery from this translation: Piece of advice proves to be Council, des – Doctor of Economics, ces – Candidate of Economics, and RAN – Russian Academy of Sciences

Funny translations have found their way to many facets of life, including business and politics. Thus, the slogan “Come Alive with Pepsi!” failed in Germany because of its unhappy translation: “Come Alive out of the Grave with Pepsi.” And the Taiwanese translation gave even more details: “Pepsi Brings Your Ancestors Back from the Grave.”

Time Magazine relates:

In 1965, prior to a reception for Queen Elizabeth II outside Bonn, Heinrich Lübke, then the President of the Federal Republic of Germany, attempting an English translation of “Gleich geht es los” (It will soon begin), told the Queen: “Equal goes it loose.” The Queen took the news well, but no better than the President of India, who was greeted at an airport in 1962 by Lübke, who, intending to ask, “How are you?” instead said: “Who are you?” To which his guest answered responsibly: “I am the President of India.”

To avoid these kind of mistakes and to help communication flow across languages use Wolfestone for all of your translation needs!

http://www.language-translation-help.com/funny-translations.html

Jean Baptiste came to join us for a few weeks from France and would like to share his internship experience. Even though he hasn’t been here for very long he has found it extremely worthwhile.

“After finishing my Erasmus year at Swansea University, I thought about doing an internship here in Swansea. I wanted to gain experience and be confronted to the work in a company. This internship in Wolfestone completes the work I have been doing at the university, it has been the opportunity to apply my knowledge in a professional environment and to meet new people, which is enriching humanly, as well as for the studies. Moreover I’m planning to enter a translation school in Paris next year. I would like to thank all the Wolfestone team for having me.”
Our interns get a real insight into the world of translation. Students are given responsibilities including; translating and proofreading documents in their native languages, assisting project managers in the preparation of documents for translation, assisting in recruiting linguists and video editing. Students are able to work along side experts in the translation industry who can guide and advise them along the way, aiming to give the student as much experience and knowledge as possible in the given time.

“I recommend such an internship to all those who are willing to extend their knowledge of languages and office related skills as well as having an insight into the real world of work”

Do you want to do an internship at Wolfestone? Visit our website www.wolfestone.co.uk!