BanosSwan
Alan Waddle
- Joined
- Jun 28, 2020
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Apologies for the horrendous title.
Source: The Times
The launch of Amazon’s Swedish website has been blighted by cultural gaffes and glaring mistranslations, including a listing for an Adidas “child sexual assault” football shirt.
The internet giant mixed up the Argentine and Swedish flags, labelled frying pans as items for women, allowed the sale of a swastika-emblazoned shower curtain and described a silicone baking mould as suitable for “chocolate, faeces, goose water and bread”.
The mistakes were so numerous that some Swedes began to speculate that they were a deliberate PR stunt. However, many of the errors appear to have been the result of a poorly designed computer translation programme that had struggled to cope with the multiple meanings of English words such as “rape”, “trunks” and “cock”.
One popular video game, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, was translated as “the savage’s breath”. Another, Need for Speed: Payback, was turned into “Do You Require Speed: Refund”.
A triple pack of men’s boxer shorts from Calvin Klein became “men’s luggage trunks”; a toy amphibious assault vehicle was marketed as a “Star Wars grievous bodily harm tank” and a fabric belt as a “narcotics strap”.
Some of the errors were more offensive. The word for a cockerel was often translated as kuk, a faintly vulgar word for penis. Thus an embroidery pattern depicting a rooster became “cross-stitch for adults – big dick, do it yourself”. A stopcock head was rendered “finish dickhead”.
Users may also have been tempted by offers of a “gypsy shirt” or a pair of pearl earrings apparently just right for “European prostitutes”.
The algorithm seems to have had particular trouble with products involving oilseed rape, which it frequently translated into valdtakt, the Swedish word for violent sexual assault. As a result the website abounded in mouse mats, jigsaws and shower curtains decorated with “sex assault flowers”, and a fishing lure was touted for “roach, barr, sex assault”.
The origins of other phrases, such as the “goose water” in the baking mould and a jacket described as an “ice cream machine”, remain an unresolved puzzle for the internet’s amateur linguists.
Source: The Times
The launch of Amazon’s Swedish website has been blighted by cultural gaffes and glaring mistranslations, including a listing for an Adidas “child sexual assault” football shirt.
The internet giant mixed up the Argentine and Swedish flags, labelled frying pans as items for women, allowed the sale of a swastika-emblazoned shower curtain and described a silicone baking mould as suitable for “chocolate, faeces, goose water and bread”.
The mistakes were so numerous that some Swedes began to speculate that they were a deliberate PR stunt. However, many of the errors appear to have been the result of a poorly designed computer translation programme that had struggled to cope with the multiple meanings of English words such as “rape”, “trunks” and “cock”.
One popular video game, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, was translated as “the savage’s breath”. Another, Need for Speed: Payback, was turned into “Do You Require Speed: Refund”.
A triple pack of men’s boxer shorts from Calvin Klein became “men’s luggage trunks”; a toy amphibious assault vehicle was marketed as a “Star Wars grievous bodily harm tank” and a fabric belt as a “narcotics strap”.
Some of the errors were more offensive. The word for a cockerel was often translated as kuk, a faintly vulgar word for penis. Thus an embroidery pattern depicting a rooster became “cross-stitch for adults – big dick, do it yourself”. A stopcock head was rendered “finish dickhead”.
Users may also have been tempted by offers of a “gypsy shirt” or a pair of pearl earrings apparently just right for “European prostitutes”.
The algorithm seems to have had particular trouble with products involving oilseed rape, which it frequently translated into valdtakt, the Swedish word for violent sexual assault. As a result the website abounded in mouse mats, jigsaws and shower curtains decorated with “sex assault flowers”, and a fishing lure was touted for “roach, barr, sex assault”.
The origins of other phrases, such as the “goose water” in the baking mould and a jacket described as an “ice cream machine”, remain an unresolved puzzle for the internet’s amateur linguists.
