There are lots of poor translations out there.

[opabinia]

Sometimes I look online for phrasing ideas. Some expressions in English don't translate easily. I just saw a scientific paper that mentions the luminal aspect of a blood vessel. I'm no certified translator, but I promise the authors weren't talking about "the illuminated side of the blood vessel." If anything, it's darker in there. Duh.

Comments

[znuh.livejournal.com]

This child is my friend. Occasionally it also becomes emergency provisions.

Nothing is better than how English gets mangled in Japan.

[lepidosiren.livejournal.com]

THE JAPANESE HAVE CREATED LIMB-REGENERATING CHILDREN

[mesatchornug.livejournal.com]

heh. my favourite has always been the thought of offering a child "algunas fresas," or even one at a time. don't know what it was but my friends and I always found it so entertaining that strawberry ="fresa"=dentist's drill. something sadistic about that, i think...

[lepidosiren.livejournal.com]

I didn't know that. Weird.

[saturniidae.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, the importance of I vs. E. They should have said "lumenal". It's even worse when scientists pun. I had to go to a talk called "Stem Cells and Semenal Discoveries", where the misspelling was intentional :/

[lepidosiren.livejournal.com]

Really? What I meant was that "luminal" must have been the word in English, and "iluminado" was what the translator came up with. I think "luminal" is correct. I'm sure "iluminado" is not. :)

Semenal, huh? Oof.

[damiel.livejournal.com]

It's pretty common that translators pick up technical translation jobs without having some background in the field they're translating. It's hard to translate well technical material if you aren't familiar with the terminology in the languages you're working with, even if you're a skilled translator (which many aren't anyways).

[lepidosiren.livejournal.com]

I know, but it's still okay to complain about the results.