We, at Today Translations, are in the habit of stressing the importance of correctly translating your message. Mistranslations can make a business look foolish, but some people never learn.
We all have stories of being in foreign parts and seeing funny signs at your accommodation or oddly named products in supermarkets. For your pleasure, in this festive period, here are some more.
In Tokyo, a hotel prominently displays the sign, ‘Swindlers dangling around the hotel at night have no connection with the management.’
Not the most reassuring message about either the neighbourhood you’re staying in, or indeed the management. By disassociating themselves so pointedly from the ne’er do wells outside, are they not protesting a little too much?
Near another establishment in Cala D’Or, Majorca, guests will note that, ‘The swimming pool water is tasted twice a day by the council.’
So the public authority pools must be a step up from the common or garden pools you find in the typical hotel then? In the mind’s eye men in suits get down on hands and knees and scoop pool water into their discerning mouths twice daily. They gargle and gargle until they are satisfied.
Well if it’s good enough for them to taste, its good enough for us to swim in, so hurrah for their initiative!
On to Munich and after your long journey you might be put off from having a nightcap by the sign in one hotel room, which reads ‘In your room you will find a minibar filled with alcoholics.’
So what are we talking about here – alcoholic dwarves when you open the door? Inebriated Leprechauns that Pest Control have been unable to discourage? Besides the expense, it’s another reason not to indulge.
Next morning if you’ve braved that minibar, you may decide to give your morning meal a skip or even sleep through. This is forbidden in one inn in Egypt, where a sign declares ‘Breakfast is obligatory.’ The words seem to be an ominous warning. Dare you risk a lie in?
Later in the evening, your appetite might have recovered from force feeding, sufficiently to have dinner.
A glance at a menu if staying at a particular hotel in Switzerland might make you think twice, if you like rump steak, or ‘Cow’s bottom’ as it’s described, with painful accuracy on the bill of fare. Have the Swiss a problem with the use of euphemisms?
But you don’t have to be a non native English speaker to make mistakes with the language. As seen in one small hotel in Cornwall, ‘Will any guests wishing to take a bath please make arrangements to have one with Mrs Harvey’, you might get a lot more than you bargain for if you wish to take a bath in that West Country lodgings.
Mrs. Harvey, too, may have to dissuade the unwarranted attentions of guests eager to make her acquaintance in the tub (as seems the decorum indicated).
So whether it’s Spanish to English translation, German to English translation, Arabic to English translation, French to English translation, Japanese to English translation and indeed vice versa, you can never be too careful.
If you’re in Cornwall, Today Translations might not be able to help you, and you will just have to take your chances!
