How Not To Translate
Translations are stressful! No matter how good you are at languages, there’s always that voice in your head worrying that you’re missing something from the original text. So, in the knowledge that the bar is always lower than you think, we’ve looked into some of the worst mistranslations in history. Your coursework may not be perfect, but no one actually died because of it – right?
Let’s start with the most famous one, President Jimmy Carter’s 1977 visit to Poland made him the butt of many Polish jokes and even got him some internet fame a few years back. His interpreter made a few mistakes during one particular speech: telling the crowd that the President had left America, never to return, and that he sexually desired them! It was a bit strange for the poor guy, who’d actually said that he’d just left America that morning and he wanted to learn what the Poles’ desired for their country.
Politics is a particularly susceptible domain for mistranslation, and with big consequences. Whilst President Jimmy Carter simply hired a different interpreter for the rest of his visit, there have been more than a few errors that made a bit more of a splash. In 1956, at the height of the Cold War, the temperature of world politics suddenly took a plunge into deeper paranoia, as news agencies across the west missed a reference to philosopher Karl Marx. Nikita Krushchev, the Secretary for the Soviet Union’s Communist Party, was reported as telling western ambassadors “we will bury you”. A direct threat like this from the Soviet leader could have heralded the beginning of mutually assured destruction: nuclear war. What he actually said, in context, was still not quite diplomatic, but much more in step with US-Soviet relations at the time. There’s a passage in Marx’ work that states “What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers.” Krushchev publicly commented years later that what he’d meant, of course, was not that the Soviets would bury them but that their own working class would. Still, at least that war was only political.
Unfortunately for Japan, there’s the possibility that the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are related to a simple misunderstanding. Whilst the American decision to drop the bomb obviously had more than one motivation, one of the main factors was the Japanese refusal to surrender unconditionally. In July 1945, the Japanese Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki responded to reporters questioning him about surrender, as the Allies waited for his decision, with the word mokusatsu. To the Japanese, this means “no comment” – a standard press response – but this was reported to Harry Truman as silent contempt, drawing on the literal meaning: “silence”. Ten days later the atomic bombs were dropped.
Even the patron saint of translators has had their reputation tarnished just a little. St Jerome was responsible for translating the Bible into Latin. From the Christian story of Adam and Eve, he translated the Tree of Good and Evil, or malus, into the Tree of Apples, malum. In all fairness, at the time, this could have meant any of several varieties of fruit and is a valid translation of the original Hebrew, but it did plant the seed for the growth of the apple tree in Christian iconography that we still see today. I’m sure any one of us could have made the same mistake! What can be taken away from this is simply that translation is a really difficult art and science. There is so much to take into account – both linguistically and culturally – which means that even professionals slip up every once in a while. But, at least, if you make a mistake in any translations you’re doing, the worst that can happen is a laugh or a bad grade!
First published: Lingo Magazine Print Edition #2 January 2024
