fabriciocarraro Hexaglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Brazil russoparabrasileirosRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4673 days ago 989 posts - 1454 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishB2, Italian, Spanish, Russian, French Studies: Dutch, German, Japanese
| Message 25 of 30 17 February 2014 at 10:06pm | IP Logged |
There's the classic example of the car "Mitsubishi Pajero" and the fact that they had to change its name in Latin American countries (not sure about Spain) because "pajero" is a slang for a guy who masturbates a lot... haha
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Gemuse Senior Member Germany Joined 4040 days ago 818 posts - 1189 votes Speaks: English Studies: German
| Message 26 of 30 25 February 2014 at 2:37pm | IP Logged |
Farley wrote:
�Ich gehe jetzt, weil Ich warm bin� � I�m going now because I�m warm.
The women laughed. Curious to find out why they laughed, he ask our teacher, who told
him his mistake. It turns out he actual said something like, �I�m going now because I�m
gay.� Everyone in the class got a good laugh.
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So "Ich bin warm" means I am gay??
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nicozerpa Triglot Senior Member Argentina Joined 4284 days ago 182 posts - 315 votes Speaks: Spanish*, Portuguese, English Studies: Italian, German
| Message 27 of 30 25 February 2014 at 3:39pm | IP Logged |
fabriciocarraro wrote:
There's the classic example of the car "Mitsubishi Pajero" and the fact that they
had to change its name in Latin American countries (not sure about Spain) because "pajero" is a slang for
a guy who masturbates a lot... haha |
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And the best part of this is that they named the car after the Pampas cat (whose scientific name is
"Leopardus pajeros"), a South American animal who lives precisely in the area where "pajero" refers to
someone who masturbates... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
There are other cases, like Mazda Laputa ("la puta" means "the wh*re") or Nissan Moco ("snot" or
"bogger")
I've once read about a Spanish kid who was in Argentina and told his local friends about how much he
enjoyed going to the beach and collecting shells ("coger conchas" in Castilian Spanish). Everybody
immediately laughed at him, because in my country "coger" means "to f*ck" and "concha" is slang for
female genitalia.
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pesahson Diglot Senior Member Poland Joined 5686 days ago 448 posts - 840 votes Speaks: Polish*, English Studies: French, Portuguese, Norwegian
| Message 28 of 30 22 March 2014 at 12:24pm | IP Logged |
HERE's a great thread with examples of mistranslation. You know, when you forget the word "toes" so you say "foot fingers".
Enjoy.
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Mrs. Dalloway Triglot Groupie Italy Joined 4927 days ago 70 posts - 95 votes Speaks: Italian*, EnglishC2, Russian Studies: GermanA2, French, Danish
| Message 29 of 30 05 May 2014 at 3:32am | IP Logged |
I spent three months in Russia repeating "у меня усы замёрзли" (my moustache froze)
coming in when the weather outside was really cold, instead of saying "у меня уши
замёрзли" (my ears froze)
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bela_lugosi Hexaglot Senior Member Finland Joined 6412 days ago 272 posts - 376 votes Speaks: English, Finnish*, Italian, Spanish, German, Swedish Studies: Russian, Estonian, Smi, Latin
| Message 30 of 30 21 June 2014 at 12:50pm | IP Logged |
I bet many English speaking tourists have had a good laugh when buying a bag of potato chips in a Finnish supermarket... There is a wide selection of 300 g "megapussi" (yes, pronounced just as it is written) on offer. ;) In our language, the word "pussi" = bag.
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