From: ph@venturi.ama.caltech.edu (Paul Hardy)
Subject: Re: Ballpark Translations (was Re: Discrimination)
Organization: California Institute of Technology
	<1992Aug9.002159.29217@cbnewse.cb.att.com>
	<1992Aug9.033538.6507@caeco.mentorg.com>
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 02:34:38 GMT

In article <1992Aug9.033538.6507@caeco.mentorg.com> randall@riffraff.slc.mentorg.com (Randall S. Krebs) writes:

>   Posted to rec.humor.funny 2/15/89.  It's been 3 years so I'll take
>   the liberty of recycling it.  Since this is rec.org.mensa, I'll expect
>   the followups to provide analyses of how anomalies in the language of
>   the host country led to the erroneous translations.
>
>       Subject: some do's and don't do's for all you travellers
>
>				 < Signs of our times >
>
>	   In another Japanese hotel room:  Please to bathe inside the tub.

This sign is for Japanese guests, who would usually wet themselves in the
tub then wash outside.  The hotels at first just posted the sign only in
Japanese, but got tired of being asked by every American/European visitor
what the sign said that now they provide the English translation as well!

>	   In a Belgrade hotel elevator: To move the cabin, push button for
>	   wishing floor.  If the cabin should enter more persons, each one
>	   should press a number of wishing floor.  Driving is then going
>	   alphabetically by national order.

This should obviously have read "alphabetically by numerical order."

>	   In a Paris hotel elevator:  Please leave your values at the front
>	   desk.

No explanation necessary -- I'll bet that's what it meant!  Was it this group
where someone recently mentioned that 20% of French women surveyed did not
think it unreasonable for a prospective employer to ask them to disrobe?

>	   In a Japanese hotel:  You are invited to take advantage of the
>	   chambermaid.

Well, Japanese bachelors have traditionally enjoyed a liberal lifestyle.

>	   In a Hong Kong supermarket:  For your convenience, we recommend
>	   courageous, efficient self-service.

Maybe "courageous" was supposed to be "courteous"?!

>	   Outside a Paris dress shop:  Dresses for street walking.

See above comment regarding France.

>	   In an advertisement by a Hong Kong dentist:  Teeth extrcted by the
>	   latest Methodists.

A few years ago, I had to poke my head into a Chinese restaurant to let them
know they had made a humorous spelling error, claiming the special of the day
to be Human Fish rather than Hunan Fish.

>	   In the window of a Swedish furrier:  Fur coats made for ladies from
>	   their own skin.

Asking price: a pound of flesh.

>	   Detour sign in Kyushi, Japan: Stop: Drive Sideways.

Obviously written by someone in a crabby mood.

>	   In a Bangkok temple: It is forbidden to enter a woman even a
>	   foreigner if dressed as a man.

This is further supported by the Unix man page, or lack thereof, for 'woman'
(type 'man woman').

>	   In a Copenhagen airline ticket office:  We take your bags and send
>	   them in all directions.

Sounds a lot more like Heathrow!

>	   On the door of a Moscow hotel room:  If this is your first visit
>	   to the USSR, you are welcome to it.

Reflecting the popular Soviet sentiment, I'm sure!

>	   In a Norwegian cocktail lounge:  Ladies are requested not to have
>	   children in the bar.

One must have control over these things as a matter of plain good manners,
sort of like when the Duchess of Windsor was informed as she lay deathly ill
in a hospital bed in Paris that it would be okay if she died before or after
Queen Elizabeth was in France, but not during her visit.

>	   At a Budapest zoo:  Please do not feed the animals.  If you have
>	   any suitable food, give it to the guard on duty.

This is fairly obvious: most people would throw popcorn, sweets, or other
nonsuitable food to the animals.  If the food is instead given to the guards,
they can be fattened up to provide diets much more suitable to carnivores.

>	   From a Japanese information booklet about using a hotel air
>	   conditioner:  Cooles and Heates: If you want just condition of warm
>	   in your room, please control yourself.

Clearly "Cooles and Heates" is an anagram for something; the true meaning lies
in the solution to the anagram...possibly "Anode Loses Chat"; one may assume
that the control is electrical, and that an anode communicates with a cooling
circuit and a heating circuit depending on its orientation.  The default is
warm --- the center position, where neither the cooling nor the heating circuit
is engaged, and so there is no need for communication with either circuit.  The
error is therefore from the translator understandably confusing "communication"
with "chat".

Okay, I admit it's a little farfetched, but at least I didn't just say that
they asked Dan Quayle.

>	   Two signs from a Majorcan shop entrance:
>		   - English well talking.

This is for the benefit of American tourists, but should have read "English
well taken", meaning that the sales force has been specially trained to act
nonplussed when confronted with English, especially if the American tourist
speaks slowly and loudly enough.

>		   - Here speeching American.

This should be "Here sprechen American."  The clue is the capitalized noun
"American", which otherwise would have been written in lower-case.

				--Paul
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