Top Translation Blunders in an Innovative Market
Translation software like Google Translate makes it very clear that there ca be only one linear translation for anything. A “cat” is a “cat” in a computer mind… never mind that it can be used to refer to people, such as in the sentence “He’s a sly cat.”
Antiquated terms like “yaahoo” and “frau” often get lost in the archive abiss, only to pop up when you least expect them to translate endearing nicknames in other languages, regardless of the fact that they haven’t been used in centuries. (The modern equivalent of course being something like “dude” or “girl”.)
But this is only a mere technicality. The real concern arises when an expletive is used to refer to a person of higher authority; when the given name “Earl” also happens to be the word for “porn” in Japanese. Urban legends of presidents calling themselves jelly doughnuts could only be more believable if Google Translate had been around for JFK to use it in the 1960s. Instead we have Japanese CEOs referring to CitiBank as a “shi*ty banku.”
Forget being misleading and forget being argumentative. What happens when a computer translated document becomes downright offensive, even by American standards? It’s hilarious to everyone but the person trying to impress.
In International Business, it’s on par with a lawyer messing up a contract. Those companies that outsource to automated computer translation software are stuck with the consequences.
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