Tuesday, March 24, 2009

LOST...IN TRANSLATION

Greece without tourism is coffee without...coffee. Everywhere you go, especially the islands, you're destined to see and read bilingual messages (or tri-lingual and so on...)!

Someone send me an e-mail a few days ago with translations gone bad (in China)...

"Excuse me, where is the Gollum section, please?


"Our corporation knows all about good...behavior"


The truth is that I like noticing translated signs and leaflets. If you look and read closely you may discover some...interesting (and hilarious:-) things. There are numerous translations out there that were and are...too lost in their own meaning!

Now I am proud to present the Greek version...

....AND...FOOD?




It's a butcher's...paradise



Grammar...no! Food...YES lol


I love taking pictures like that. These are from Samos, a beautiful island I've been to last summer. Wonderful people and I tell you the food...yummy!

I remember signs like that, signs I didn't take pictures of and now I regret. However...

I'll tell you the story of a sweet and adorable street vendor (selling goodies like sweets and honey). Has this piece of carton where he writes the name of his products and their prices. It 's all great so far, till you reach the point where you want to know how much money you have to give for a big jar of honey. You search and read, but all you get is a "honig 5 Euros" and you are like "hmm, 'honig'...wonder what that is?!?!"


Take care
Peace and love
xoxo

9 comments:

Brian Miller said...

funny post...will have to make sure i always keep my desk clean in case something happens unexpectedly....

New Yorker wannabes said...

haha, hey Brian lol
You never know...life is full of surprises :-)

Take care
peace and love
xoxo

Candie said...

LOL great post!
I have to go to Greece one day,I miss greek cakes,hummmmm!!!!

New Yorker wannabes said...

Hey Candie! Glad you stopped by. Oh I wish you can come one day! And I have to come to France, too lol

Hope we both get what we want :-)

Peace and love
xoxo

Megan said...

Ha! Those are great! You see things like that on the internet all the time but it's so much more fun when you see it and take the picture yourself.

:)

Mrsupole said...

I enjoyed this so much. I posted on the New York one but I guess it got lost.

But I have heard that the Chinese have a hard time with translating into other languages, but they are willing to quickly change the signs when someone points them out. I think that is due to embaressment.

But I wonder how well we would do to translate our language into theirs. Probably the same thing would happen.

Oh well, such is life.

New Yorker wannabes said...

Megan: I know!! Everytime I notice a sign like that and I have a camera with me I am so happy. These things have got to be captured lol

Mrsupole: Yes you are right! In my opinion it would be close to impossible to translate something in Chinese in a correct way...too difficult lol

xoxoxo

meggie said...

Does this mean the food will kill??

New Yorker wannabes said...

It is definitely a 'killer'...this food Meggie lol

xoxo