The greatest mistranslations ever (BBC)
By Fiona Macdonald
Google Translates latest update turning the app into a real-time interpreter has been heralded as bringing us closer to a world where language is no longer a barrier. Despite glitches, it offers a glimpse of a future in which there are no linguistic misunderstandings especially ones that change the course of history. BBC Culture looks back at the greatest mistranslations of the past, with a 19th-Century astronomer finding signs of intelligent life on Mars and a US president expressing sexual desire for an entire nation.
Life on Mars
When Italian astronomer Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli began mapping Mars in 1877, he inadvertently sparked an entire science-fiction oeuvre. The director of Milans Brera Observatory dubbed dark and light areas on the planets surface seas and continents labelling what he thought were channels with the Italian word canali. Unfortunately, his peers translated that as canals, launching a theory that they had been created by intelligent lifeforms on Mars.
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More of a misunderstanding than a mistranslation, one often-repeated phrase might have been reinforced by racial stereotypes. During Richard Nixons visit to China in 1972, Chinese premier Zhou Enlai famously said it was too early to tell when evaluating the effects of the French Revolution. He was praised for his sage words, seen as reflecting Chinese philosophy; yet he was actually referring to the May 1968 events in France.
According to retired US diplomat Charles W Freeman Jr Nixons interpreter during the historic trip the misconstrued comment was one of those convenient misunderstandings that never gets corrected. Freeman said: I cannot explain the confusion about Zhous comment except in terms of the extent to which it conveniently bolstered a stereotype (as usual with all stereotypes, partly perceptive) about Chinese statesmen as far-sighted individuals who think in longer terms than their Western counterparts.
It was what people wanted to hear and believe, so it took hold.
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more:
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20150202-the-greatest-mistranslations-ever