2009/12/05

String quartet featuring "Katie Wikinson (he violates), Nicholas Holland (hoop)"

El Espíritu del Sur is a specialist music promotor which doesn't know the English names for common musical instruments and doesn't think it's worth paying someone to find out. And so we may enjoy gems like viola (en) -> he violates (es):

BALANESCU QUARTET.
The project that we propose is " Quartet Programme" in that Alexander Balanescu takes part (violin), James Shenton (violin), Katie Wikinson (he violates), Nicholas Holland (hoop). The Balanescu quartet to developed a repertoire of high quality for many years, including original music of Alexander Balanescu and collaborations with classic and nonclassic composers like Michael Nyman, Gavin Bryars, Kraftwerk and David Byrne.

Is pig ignorance the true spirit of the south?

2009/10/12

Pubic Monopolies, Concessions and Competition Law and Policies

Oh dear. The translation of this memo by the Spanish National Competition Commission is actually pretty good, so I suspect there's some revenge scenario at work here.

2009/08/06

Santa Coloma de Gramenet council website

I'm not sure whether the English version (half of which is in Catalan) of the website of the Ajuntament de Santa Coloma de Gramenet counts as fucked translation or not. The following, part of the greeting from Mayor Bartomeu Muñoz i Calvet, is typical:

Well-beloved internauts,

I want to sincerely welcome you to the doorway grame.net, where you will find all kind of information about the city that honours me to preside and to present you, Santa Coloma de Gramenet. It is a young, multicultural, dynamic and enterprising city. An opened city in a constant process of tansformation.


Mistranslations galore and a failure to check spelling or style might easily lead one to believe that Santa Coloma is a den of incompetents, but there are no really crazy errors, and you can more or less follow what they're trying to say. So probably just profoundly amateurish rather than fucked, but you may disagree.

2009/07/05

Clientes / Costumers

MurciaMarketing has a photo of the curious sign that greets the hoards of designers and suppliers of theatrical vestments disembarking hourly at Murcia Airport, but no one else:



(Thanks Transblawg.)

2009/06/18

CROWDED BY APPEARANCE OF IT DENOUNCES

Lenox has scanned the Guardia Civil's English translation of a crime report form. I particularly liked the confusion of first person singular verb forms and masculine nouns. So objeto -> "I object" instead of "object".

2009/05/26

"Fuck the certain price of goods"

The mother of all fucked translators lives and works in China.

2009/05/21

A beach bar called Rape



Foreigners may know what a chiringuito is, but they're unlikely to preferentially associate rape with monk fish. Our excellent correspondent has suggested that a french-letter machine in the bathroom of this Mojácar hostelry might also help.