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I’m not sure that the business translator’s job is much different from that of the writers of menus in foreign countries, by which we are reliably amused. (I often wonder why no native English speaker is consulted by the proprietor before he goes into print.)
These near misses in translation used to be the mainstay of the Daily Telegraph’s Peterborough column. Now there is a website (www.lostintranslationbook.com) inspired by a book of funny foreign signs called Lost in Translation by Charlie Croker. Among contributions by visitors to the site are these:
Sign in a French gite: ‘Mr and Mrs Occupiers are request don’t throw papers, cigarets, matches and so on, in the stairs, halls, courses and above all, don’t spit.’
On the door of a closed shop in Egypt: ‘I’m in the toilet.’
A sign in Portugal: ‘Selling of alcoholic drink is forbidden to those who are notoriously drunk or to the ones who appear to have psychic abnormities.’
Of course the Chinese are reliable sources, as with this sign at the Ethnic Minorities Park, Beijing: ‘Racist Park.’
Emergency exit sign at Beijing Airport: ‘Do no use in peacetime.’
Sign for disabled toilet, China: ‘Deformed man toilet.’
In effect, it is often the conventions that are lacking, not the meaning.
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