Funny interpretations of foreign languages

cdhostage · July 22, 2002 9:19PM

I read today's Wired webpage and on the side it says [quote] Quote Marks

"I'm sitting at love seat number 47 at this particular PCbaang , if you'd care to join me." <hr></blockquote>

At first I thought it was some guy bloiwing stuff up, but baang is a Korean word or something of the sort.

Share some dfunyy interpratinongs of foreign words or sentences.

I like the German town Fücking. Pronounced Fooking. The entire industrial outuput of the hamlet is devoted to making road signs that are stolen by rude Americans.

cable · July 22, 2002 10:18PM

In the Thai language, the word that you use to say to get something out of your pocket, sounds the same as the American word F*ck. Swear word in English, normal word in Thai.

cdhostage · July 22, 2002 10:57PM

so fvck your cellphone means get out your cellphone.

There's always funny things happening when you try to listen to British people. Until I was about nine I could not for the life of me understand a straight simple sentence from my Yorkshire uncle.

anders · July 23, 2002 1:40AM

The most funny I have ever seen is "slikpik" which is an Austrailen vararity of lotto. In danish "slikpik" means "lick" and then a word that rimes on lick and probably is in the AI censor list.

giaguara · July 23, 2002 7:43AM

Thehehe!!

There are plenty of them...

'slip' in italian are the underpants... and 'slips' in swedish is the tie.. i more or less could understand a sentence in a journal, there was something like 'when i go to work i take off my slip and put it to the desk container..' and i thought 'wo.. these weird swedish habits...' till someone translated it for me.

then the word 'lost' in portuguese in spanish means 'pregnant' .. so one of my brasilian friends was lost in spain and went to ask advice from a policeman (my friend is male!!) so what he heard 'excuse me i'm pregnant..' (embarazado..) .. ehehe

right now nothing more comes to my mind.. i'll post them later...

oh, 'preservative' in italian and spanish in 'condom' ... and 'camisinha' has a double meaning for t-shirt and condom ...

thoth2 · July 23, 2002 8:56AM

I once knew a vietanese guy whose name

was Tay Ho. Unfortunately, I found out what

his middle name was. Phuoc.

So his full name was Tay Phuoc Ho. I asked him

how to pronounce it and he confirmed my worst suspicions.

:eek:

Thoth

giaguara · July 23, 2002 9:06AM

Well...

Finnish is a weird language... and even more weird: there are plenty of words pronounced on the same way as in italian..but meaning completely different things.

some examples: "panna" italian= cream finnish=put (also ****, as the verb) "cazzo" italian = dick "katso" (the same pronounce) finnish = look .. when a finnish turist says "katso merta" (look on the sea) the italian hears it d*ck s*it .. "kuulo" in finnish is (hear, as the ability.. sorry dont remember the english word) and a word sounding like the same in italian means ass (also good luck). there are too many examples of this kind weirdnesses in these tqwo languages that have nothing in common .. :-/

also there is a small animal used to the fur called 'minkki' in finnish and even that can be misunderstood... there's a word close to that in sicilian meaning once again the d..ck ...

i suppose these are the most common words the finns learn in italian or the italians in finnish.. ahaha!!

giaguara · July 23, 2002 9:09AM

Oh, i remembered now there is a cool site of the Japanese 'Engrish' ..

<a href="http://www.engrish.com"; target="_blank">http://www.engrish.com</a>;

it has a lot of 'nice' translations in 'engrish' ...

thuh freak · July 23, 2002 10:26AM

wow. engrish.com is really funny. i always thought that it was just a stereotype, but it seems that a lot of Japanese people (and corporations) have trouble with the roman 'L'. i would think that there would be some kind of native-English speaker at these companies to translate the packaging details.

icarus · July 23, 2002 12:35PM

I speak Japenese and you are mostly right about the problem with ls but that is simply because of alphabet restrictions....

As for a good one in Japanese: Ama is a word with two translations....if you write it in hiragana its a bitch, if you use the proper Kanji, its a nun...hehehe

wyntir · July 23, 2002 9:52PM

I remember a good one from Japan. "Can you ski?" my friends would ask. But not really. They were really saying (those tricky Japanese

) "kyo nyu suki?" or, roughly, "do you like big boobies?" And, being from Alaska, I'd say, "of course!" with a deep belly-laugh.

That's my favorite.

They had a line of commercials that featured English/Japanese puns. One I remember is a Japanese guy holding a huge spud in his hand and saying something like (I'm not sure of the exact words):

"Howa tamu ijiru na!" (watamijiruna?)

Which I believe is something like, 'there is the potato,' but it sounds remarkably similar to the English 'what time is it now.' Then they'd try to sell you English instruction tapes. Great fun. <a href="http://drew.corrupt.net/domo.html"; target="_blank">Japanese commercials</a> are the shit.

[ 07-23-2002: Message edited by: wyntir ]

icarus · July 24, 2002 3:40AM

Great Post wyntir san!

The funniest you can get is (if you read katakana that is) go into itunes when your mac is set to japanese as the default language. I have many songs in Ribarari! Or internet explorer is great for looking at a "webu-saito" (you guessed it folks! web sites!)

Make no mistake....Japanese is tricky! The difference between your toung and your corpse is the letter i (Shita and Shitai) Whatch out!

giaguara · July 24, 2002 6:17AM

Omg... the same problem of translating the terms what u dont translate gives headache in italian as well!!

Normally download is used as download. and password and many many many other terms.

When they in a page translate those it gives a bad headache!!

Kind of the same problem in Linux... i wanted to use it in italian and spanish but the translations give me headache so in the end i prefer english though those languages would be easier... if the translations didn't suck...

leviathan · July 27, 2002 11:00AM

the french word for 'spoon' and 'leather' are pronounced the same but spelt differnetly - on a completly different topic that word sounds the same as queer in the english language

powerdoc · July 27, 2002 11:59AM

[quote]Originally posted by leviathan:

the french word for 'spoon' and 'leather' are pronounced the same but spelt differnetly - on a completly different topic that word sounds the same as queer in the english language<hr></blockquote>

spoon : cuillere

leather : cuir

it's not the same pronounciation

[ 07-27-2002: Message edited by: Powerdoc ]

amorph · July 27, 2002 12:16PM

The last good snafu I saw was when I went to Renault's website to look at a new coupe of theirs.

The translation service obligingly translated into English all the text about the great new cut from Renault.

powerdoc · July 27, 2002 3:02PM

[quote]Originally posted by Amorph:

The last good snafu I saw was when I went to Renault's website to look at a new coupe of theirs.

The translation service obligingly translated into English all the text about the great new cut from Renault.<hr></blockquote>

and what is your advice for the design of this cut (sorry coupe) from Renault ? A litte bit strange ?

Funny interpretations of foreign languages

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