History BlindIdiotTranslation / Literature

*** Confusing "bogeys" with "bogeyman" when talking about flavours in Bertie Bott's Every-Flavour Beans.

* The Hungarian [[SmallNameBigEgo translator]] of ''Literature/FiftyShadesOfGrey'' went {{memetic|Mutation}} ([[http://fuckyeahtoteas.tumblr.com/ for the curious and bilingual]]) because of this trope. After he arrogantly denied mistranslating anything, when an interviewer asked him why on Earth did he translate Music/KingsOfLeon as Disney/TheLionKing a local blog called [[http://leiterjakab.blog.hu/ Leiter Jakab]][[note]]They specialize in finding Blind Idiot Translations and {{Translation Train Wreck}}s.[[/note]] took issue with the statement and tone. To date they found 6 lengthy blogposts worth of JustForFun/{{egregious}} examples of these and are only 1/4 through the book.

* The German translator of Mr Creator/TerryPratchett's Literature/{{Discworld}} books. For example, the "bloody stupid robe", worn by the big bad in ''Discworld/GuardsGuards'' becomes "blutroter Seidenumhang" (blood red silk robe). Every character talks exactly the same way, with the exception of the trolls, who talk in infinitives. ("I be big troll. I be scary")
** They also made a literal translation of a wordplay in ''Discworld/SoulMusic''. In English, "club" can mean both an establishment and a weapon, so confusing the both is possible. In German though, there are two different words and confusing them makes no sense whatsoever.

** Sometimes done deliberately in-text, with Dwarfish and Trollish lines accompanied by footnotes that ''almost'' translate them to well-known phrases. (e.g. Ruby's version of "Falling in Love Again" in ''Discworld/MovingPictures'', which apparently contains the line "Vy iss it I am a blue colour?")
** A translation of ''Discworld/{{Sourcery}}'' into Croatian is terrible from the very start: the title was translated as “Sour Spellcasting”, probably because the blind idiot translator considered it a pun on “sour cherry” instead of “source of magic”, ''as it is explained in the book itself''.

* Used in-universe in ''Literature/TheFlyingSorcerers''. The human explorer introduces himself by his English name, which his computer translates into the native tongue "as a color, shade of purple-grey". He spends much of the book being called "Purple" because of this, but he eventually sets them straight: His name was [[spoiler:Asimov ("As-a-mauve")]].

* One translation of ''{{Literature/Foundation}}'' to Russian has translated the words "Logarithmic [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slide_rule slide rule]]" as "Pravilo logariphmicheskogo skol'zheniya". Literally "The law of logarithmic sliding".

* In the (Spaniard) Spanish translation of [[Creator/IsaacAsimov Isaac Asimov]]'s non-fiction book ''A choice of catastrophes'' there were gems such as black holes (mis)translated as ''ventanas negras''[[note]]Black windows in English[[/note]] instead of the (Spaniard) Spanish typical translation ''agujeros negros''.

* ''Literature/Foundation1951'': One translation of the English ''Foundation'' to Russian translates the words "Logarithmic slide rule" as "Pravilo logariphmicheskogo skol'zheniya". Literally "The law of logarithmic sliding".

* The [[https://spanishto-english.com/ Spanish to English]] translation of the ''LightNovel/HaruhiSuzumiya'' novels makes you wonder what's wrong with them. Not only they opened by giving the nameless narrator a name, but in these books rife with typos names get switched around as if choosing speakers by throwing darts. On the plus side, bad ortography and identity crisis (as well as questionable cover choices, from some of which they fortunately backtracked) tend to avert the attention from any potential less objectionable mistranslation.

* A translation of Pratchett’s ''Sourcery'' into Croatian is terrible from the very start: the title was translated as “Sour Spellcasting”, probably because the blind idiot translator considered it a pun on “sour cherry” instead of “source of magic”, ''as it is explained in the book itself''.

* In his seminal essay ''[[http://deoxy.org/pkd_how2build.htm How to Build a Universe that Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later]]'', Creator/PhilipKDick describes a peculiar and rather amusing mental glitch when the German translator got to one particular line in the novel ''Literature/{{Ubik}}''. At that point, when the translator got to the point where the, shall we say, ''ubiquitous'' product notes, "I am the Word", the translator decided that the best direct approximation was, ''"I am the brand name."''

** The Portuguese translation of ''Philosopher's Stone'' translated "[[UsefulNotes/TheLondonUnderground London Underground]]" as in a literal underground, a pitfall warned about in grade school. They did it AGAIN in ''Chamber Of Secrets'' when Harry tells Mr Weasley about "taking the underground" to which he replies "Really? Were there "[[{{Malaproper}} escapators]]?", the latter word being translated as "fugitives" which makes the entire conversation take on a weird new meaning.
*** They also had the somewhat understandable error of not realizing that "witch" and "wizard" are gender specific (though exceptions exist in other works). That coupled with the vague descriptions of certain characters caused certain characters to [[ShesAManInJapan spontaneously change genders between books]].

File (Literature)

* The infamous Polish translations by Jerzy Łoziński, of which that of ''LordOfTheRings'' is the best known (he also did ''Dune''). Where do we start?

* Tolkien's works in Hungarian generally fared very well, and the translations are regarded as utter masterpieces, save for a single instance: in this version of the ''LordOfTheRings'', it was Merry (called Trufa in the translation) who landed the finishing blow to the Witch-King, not Éowyn.

** Even worse was the whole witches vs. wizards deal. There are two possible words for magic-user in Hebrew: ''mechashef'' and ''kosem''. The translations of The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic chose to use ''mechashef''. Unfortunately, there's only one word for "witch": ''machshefa'' (''kosemet'' would only mean "female magic-user"). So when Equal Rites comes along and they make a big deal over the fact that Esk is the first female magic-user ''as opposed to witch'', it would have made sense to put a translator's note at the beginning saying "up until now we used ''mechashef'', but in this book a wizard is a ''kosem''" -- and made Esk the first ''kosemet'' and Granny Weatherwax a ''machshefa''. But if they'd done that, I wouldn't be entering it in this page, right? They made Esk the first ''kosemet'' and Granny Weatherwax a ''machshefa'' - but they left wizard as ''mechashef''! So they made a big deal over the first ''kosemet'' appearing, and accidentally implied that there was no such thing as a male ''kosem''!

* The belief that ''The Grapes Of Wrath'' was translated into Japanese as "The Angry Raisins" [[http://www.snopes.com/language/misxlate/raisins.asp is merely an urban legend.]]

** The original translation also muddled up the iconic "freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four" line into "freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make '''two'''". The translator must've cherished the right to practice bad arithmetic.

*** They also had the somewhat understandable error of not realizing that "witch" and "wizard" are gender specific (though exceptions exist in other works). That coupled with the vague descriptions of certain characters caused certain characters to [[ShesAManInJapan spontaneously change genders between books]])

* Mark Twain's short story ''The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County'' was translated into French. Suspecting that the lukewarm response to it was due to poor translation, Twain relates that with the assistance of a dictionary he translated it word for word back to English (producing a BlindIdiotTranslation of a BlindIdiotTranslation). The result is arguably [[CrowningMomentOfFunny even funnier than the original]].

* Rob Grant's ''Incompetence'' has the main character attempt to fix his boiler using an instruction manual that was "translated from Japanese to English by a Kalahari bushman whose closest encounter with either language had been a chance encounter with a German explorer trying to acertain the going rate for a second hand camel in terms of petroleum and shiny beads."

* The belief that ''The Grapes Of Wrath'' was translated into Japanese with the title of "The Angry Raisins". [[http://www.snopes.com/language/misxlate/raisins.asp This is an urban legend and did not happen.]]

* One of the most {{egregious}} examples could be ''[[http://www.zompist.com/spoke.html English as She is Spoke]]'', an 1800s book by a Portuguese man, who only spoke Portuguese, writing an English phrasebook with the help of a Portuguese-French phrasebook and a French-English dictionary. HilarityEnsues.

* The Hungarian [[SmallNameBigEgo translator]] of ''Literature/FiftyShadesOfGrey'' went {{memetic|Mutation}} ([[http://fuckyeahtoteas.tumblr.com/ for the curious and bilingual]]) because of this trope. After he arrogantly denied mistranslating anything, when an interviewer asked him why on Earth did he translate Music/KingsOfLeon as Disney/TheLionKing a local blog called [[http://leiterjakab.blog.hu/ Leiter Jakab]][[note]]They specialize in finding Blind Idiot Translations and {{Translation Train Wreck}}s.[[/note]] took issue with the statement and tone. To date they found 6 lengthy blogposts worth of {{egregious}} examples of these and are only 1/4 through the book.

** Even worse was the whole witches vs. wizards deal. There are two possible words for magic-user in Hebrew: ''mechashef'' and ''kosem''. The translations of The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic chose to use ''mechashef''. Unfortunately, there's only one word for "witch": ''machshefa'' (''kosemet'' would only mean "female magic-user"). So when Equal Rites comes along and they make a big deal over the fact that Esk is the first female magic-user ''as opposed to witch'', it would have made sense to put a translator's note at the beginning saying "up until now we used ''mechashef'', but in this book a wizard is a ''kosem''" - and made Esk the first ''kosemet'' and Granny Weatherwax a ''machshefa''. But if they'd done that, I wouldn't be entering it in this page, right? They made Esk the first ''kosemet'' and Granny Weatherwax a ''machshefa'' - but they left wizard as ''mechashef''! So they made a big deal over the first ''kosemet'' appearing, and accidentally implied that there was no such thing as a male ''kosem''!

* Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge has been translated as ''setä'' (paternal uncle) in Finnish, while in reality he is Donald's maternal uncle, ''eno''. Likewise, the nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie originally were ''veljenpojat'' (fraternal nephews) while they are ''siskonpojat'' (sororial nephews). Today they are translated as ''ankanpojat'' ("ducklings"). Not surprising, since English doesn't have separate words for paternal and maternal uncles, and the canonic relationships were established long after [[ComicBook/DisneyDucksComicUniverse Disney Comics]] were published in the Nordic countries. It was a 50/50 guess, and someone made the wrong one.

*** Hogwarts ("Tylypahka"): She dug down so far into the different meanings of "hog" that she came up with a meaning you can't even find in most dictionaries, meaning something like "grim". She wrote later that she noticed her wrong guess with the hogs in the place's heraldry. The result, however, was probably better than going for something closer to the original meaning and creating a name that would more naturally be read as "Pig Wart" ("Sikapahka"), because ew.

* The English translation of Stieg Larsson's ''Men Who Hate Women'' (aka ''[[Literature/TheMillenniumTrilogy The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo]]'') has one while giving the backstory to why Mikael Blomkvist is nicknamed Kalle Blomkvist. In his youth he helped stop a gang of robbers known as Björnligan, which is the Swedish name for [[Creator/CarlBarks The Beagle Boys]]. In the English translation they're called The Bear Gang, which is a literal translation of "Björnligan". Translating the gang's name directly rather than ''correctly'' replacing the Swedish name for the Beagle Boys with the English one, thus ruining the Disney references concerning the gang, makes no sense.

** Another problem with the translation is that Björn doesn't necessarily reference bears - it might very well, indeed given Swedish criminal gang naming traditions is fairly likely to, reference the Swedish ''name'' Björn.

** This same error happened in Åke Ohlmarks Swedish translation - according to him, it was Merry, not Éowyn, who killed the Witch-King.

* In the German translation of ''Literature/{{Dracula}}''. In the pivotal scene where Mina is visited by the Count at night, she tells the reader that she "couldn't resist him." In the original she says that she "didn't want to resist him" (she thinks that's part of his terrible power) - a small, but important difference.