History BlindIdiotTranslation / Literature

*** Creator/AkeOhlmarks' original Swedish translation became infamous, due to a tenuous grasp of English idioms, and mistook the meaning of various words. In one sentence, "roamed" was translated as "råmade," which despite phonetic similarity actually means "bellowed" or "mooed." The word "stripped," as used by Orcs, was translated as "piskade," meaning "whipped."[[note]]Ohlmarks was possibly going by the archaic English noun "stripe," or its cognates in other Germanic languages.[[/note]] The idiom "turn over a new leaf, and keep it turned" became "pick a fresh leaf, and hold it in your hand." Tolkien, being a CunningLinguist, wrote to the publisher and sent a blistering blow-by-blow criticism of Ohlmarks' translation, which can be found in ''The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien''.

* In his 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."'' "I am the Word" would be blasphemous, see John1,1.

* Some truly gruesome translations have happened when English Canadian books (especially ones by English Quebecers set in Quebec) fall into the hands of clueless translators in France. They have a bad habit of blithely using French French vocabulary when Quebec French would clearly be more appropriate (imagine translating a French book set in the United States and using British English terms throughout). In particular, they often guess at translations for unfamiliar Canadian realities, without it ever occurring to them that many of those, Canada being bilingual, will have set equivalents in French. To make matters worse, since France is a bigger market than Quebec, these often end up being ''the only translations available in Quebec itself.'' In one well-known instance, a mention of "Lower Canada" (''Bas-Canada'')—the colony that later became Quebec itself—was misrendered as "Canada inférieur."

* The Danish translation of Robert Harris' WWII novel ''Literature/{{Enigma}}'' translated the text of a classic propaganda poster warning people to beware of enemy spies ([[http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/theartofwar/prop/home_front/INF3_0229.htm "Keep mum, she's not so dumb"]]) as "Keep Mother, she is not so stupid".

* "the dark brethren of the elves" was translated to "de onda alfernas bröder" (brothers of the evil elves) in the official Swedish translation of a fantasy book. [[note]]Note that in addition to the three obvious mistakes, there is a fourth mistake that is lost in the return translation to English, namely the use of ''alf'', rather than ''alv'', for ''elf''. ''Alf'' is an archaic spelling for ''alv'' (officially abandoned in the linguistic reform of 1906, almost a century earlier), when referring to the creature from Norse mythology, never when referring to the fantasy staple.[[/note]]

* The Hemulen from Literature/TheMoomins. -en in Swedish is the definitive article, meaning that his actual name is “The the hemul”.
** Additionally, some of the main cast members’ names mean something in their original language, but were lost to translation.

** One of the most notorious examples was the French-French translation of ''[[Literature/BarneysVersion Barney's Version]]'' by Creator/MordecaiRichler. Amid many, many incompetent renderings [[note]]"St. Urban Street" (''rue Saint-Urbain'') as ''Urban Street'', "Bishop Street" (''rue Bishop'') as ''rue L'Évêque'', and leaving "CBC" (''Radio-Canada'') untranslated[[/note]], the most galling is the complete mangling of many basic terms in ice hockey, which is a ''major'' cultural touchstone for French Quebecers. ''Jeux'' is used instead of ''matchs'', a player is given a ''carton rouge'' (a soccer term for a sending-off, a permanent exclusion from the game) instead of a penalty, and most disastrously, the revered Maurice Richard's nickname, "The Rocket" (''le Rocket''), was translated literally as ''le Fusée''![[https://www.noslangues-ourlanguages.gc.ca/en/favourite-articles/through-the-lens-of-history-historic-fateful-or-comical-translation-errors]][[note]]The notorious, and possibly even worse, gaffe of referring to the Stanley Cup (''la coupe Stanley'') as ''la tasse Stanley'' ("the Stanley mug"!), happened in a translation of a different book.[[/note]] Some have argued that French Quebecers' antipathy for Richler stems at least in part to their only having access to such translations, which make Richler's point of view sound like that of someone utterly unfamiliar with Quebec rather than having spent his whole life there. As a result a pair of translators from Quebec have since published improved versions to correct this.

* One of the most JustForFun/{{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.

* This one's not evident unless you are versed on European fauna, but the Spanish version of the ''Literature/EarthsChildren'' second book translated [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chamois chamois]] (Spanish ''gamuza'') as [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallow_deer fallow deer]] (Spanish ''gamo''). This way, the text ended with constant mentions of people going into the mountains of Ice Age Europe to hunt fallow deer, an animal that does not live in mountains and that is only recorded in Europe during warm periods to boot.

* 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."'' "I am the Word" would be blasphemous, see John1,1.

* In the Finnish translation of ''[[WarCraft2016 Warcraft:]] Durotan'', the prequel novel of the 2016 film, the name of the orc clan Bleeding Hollow received the rather perplexing translation of "Vuotavan vajouma", which roughly means "shallow hole of the leaking one". The clan's name is supposed to be derived from the tradition of their chieftains partaking in ritualistic EyeScream, "hollow" in this context referring to an empty eye socket, and the translator presumably wasn't aware of this.
* The Spanish translation of Literature/TheStarsAreLegion often translates the verb "to sign" (saying something using sign language) as "señalar" (pointing something). As a result, dialogues in sign language become quite jarring.

* The German translation of Creator/KenKesey's ''Literature/OneFlewOverTheCuckoosNest'' (adapted into a [[Film/OneFlewOverTheCuckoosNest feature film]] that was released in 1975) was published under the title ''Einer flog über das Kuckucksnest'', a literal translation that loses its idiomatic meaning and therefore nonsensical. The word "cuckoo" in the title does not refer to the bird but a mental patient while the "cuckoo's nest" refers to an insane asylum. A more accurate, less literal translation would be something like, "Ein Verrückter in der Irrenanstalt," meaning "A Madman in the Insane Asylum."
* The European Portuguese translation of Creator/RichardDawkins' ''Literature/TheGodDelusion'' was translated under the title ''A desilusão de Deus'', a mistranslation of the original title. In Portuguese, "desilusão" means "disappointment," not "delusion," while the proper term for "delusion" in Portuguese is "delírio." Averted with the Brazilian Portuguese translation, properly titled ''Deus, um delírio''.
* The handful ''Toys/{{Bionicle}}'' books released in Hungarian have this in spades.

* The first printing of Michael Chrichton's ''Franchise/JurassicPark'' in Hungarian had some instances where the names of various characters got inexplicably mixed up. Gennaro becomes Hammond for a line (right when he's talking ''about'' Hammond), and Muldoon gets to be Malcolm briefly. The translator also had trouble keeping the word "hypsilophodont" consistent -- sometimes, it's left like that, but it also appears as "hypsilophodontida" and "hypsilophodonta". Then, of course, the dinosaur ''Maiasaura'' is always written as "''Maiasaurus''", which wouldn't work, as the name means "good mother lizard", and "-saurus" is usually seen as a masculine suffix.

* An example with a ''less'' literal example: Early English translations of [[Creator/MarcelProust Proust's]] ''À la recherche du temps perdu'' (literally: "in the search for time lost") translated the title as "Remembrance of Things Past," a Shakespearian allusion. Later translators corrected this, opting for "In Search of Lost Time" instead, which is the closest English translation, both literally and otherwise.

** One of the most notorious examples was the French-French translation of ''[[Literature/BarneysVersion Barney's Version]]'' by Creator/MordecaiRichler. Amid many, many incompetent renderings [[note]]"St. Urban Street" (''rue Saint-Urbain'') as ''Urban Street'', "Bishop Street" (''rue Bishop'') as ''rue L'Évêque'', and leaving "CBC" (''Radio-Canada'') untranslated[[/note]], the most galling is the complete mangling of many basic terms in ice hockey, which is a ''major'' cultural touchstone for French Quebecers. ''Jeux'' is used instead of ''matchs'', a player is given a ''carton rouge'' (a soccer term for a sending-off, a permanent exclusion from the game) instead of a penalty, and most disastrously, the revered Maurice Richard's nickname, "The Rocket" (''le Rocket''), was translated literally as ''le Fusée''![[https://www.noslangues-ourlanguages.gc.ca/en/favourite-articles/through-the-lens-of-history-historic-fateful-or-comical-translation-errors]][[note]]The notorious, and possibly even worse, gaffe of referring to the Stanley Cup (''la coupe Stanley'') as ''la tasse Stanley'' ("the Stanley mug"!), happened in a translation of a different book.[[/note]] Some have argued that French Quebecers' antipathy for Richler stems at least in part to their only having access to such translations, which make Richler's point of view sound like that of someone utterly unfamiliar with Quebec rather than having spent his whole life there. As a result a pair of translators from Quebec have set out to produce improved versions to correct this.

* Early English translations of [[Creator/MarcelProust Proust's]] ''À la recherche du temps perdu'' (literally: "at the search [again] for time lost") translated the title as "Remembrance of Things Past." Later translators corrected this, opting for "In Search of Lost Time" instead, which is the closest English translation, both literally and otherwise.

* The [[https://spanishto-english.com/ Spanish to English]] translation of the ''LightNovel/HaruhiSuzumiya'' novels are full of errors. Not only do they open with giving the nameless narrator a name, but in these books, there are tons of typos, and names get switched around as if the translators are choosing speakers by throwing darts. On the plus side, bad orthography and identity crises (as well as questionable cover choices, some of which they backtracked from) tend to avert the attention from any potential less objectionable mistranslation.

* Stieg Larsson's ''Men Who Hate Women'' (aka ''[[Literature/TheMillenniumTrilogy The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo]]'':

** The [[CutAndPasteTranslation "translation"]] directed by King James the First of England:

*** They translated "the UsefulNotes/LondonUnderground" too literally as "subsolo de Londres" rather than "Metropolitano de Londres", a pitfall warned about in grade school.

*** They translated "UsefulNotes/LondonUnderground" as in a literal underground, a pitfall warned about in grade school.

** In the Swedish translation of ''Philosopher's Stone'':
*** The lemon sherbet that Dumbledore offers [=McGonagall=] has been replaced with a lemon popsicle.
*** In the original, the engraving on the Mirror of Erised is supposed to look like some ancient, mysterious language, but is actually just {{backwards|name}} text with different spacing. The translator apparently didn't realise this and left it in completely unchanged, making it harder for Swedish readers if they wanted to decode it. Later editions fixed this, replacing the backward text of the original with backward text in Swedish.

*** The infamous Polish translations by Jerzy Łoziński, of which that of ''The Lord of the Rings'' is the best known (he also did ''Dune''):
:::: Calling dwarves "krzatowie". That can be most closely translated as "ixies" - "pixies" (skrzaty) without the first letter. It probably isn't ''that'' bad in itself, the "default" translation of "dwarf" being kind of a neologism as well (an augmentative of the Polish name for the garden gnome-style dwarf, mirroring Prof. Tolkien's shift from soft to hard plural form) -- but let's proceed down the rabbit hole...
*** Translating "Strider" as "Łazik". Instead of the proud Strider, we get something like "Rover" as in "lunar rover" or "Land Rover", or worse even, "Stroller" or "Rambler". It sounds just as childish.
*** Trying to localize all the personal and place names. Frodo Baggins of Bag End becomes Frodo Bagosz of Bagoszno. Rivendell became "Tajar", which is supposedly a portmanteau of "Utajony" (hidden, secret) and "Jar" (ravine).
*** And inevitably, he twisted the ''original'' names: to fit his translation of "Brandywine", the river Baranduine turned to Goranduine, twisting the name's meaning from "Brown River" to "River of Dread". Yeah...

*** Calling dwarves "krzatowie". That can be most closely translated as "ixies" - "pixies" (skrzaty) without the first letter. It probably isn't ''that'' bad in itself, the "default" translation of "dwarf" being kind of a neologism as well (an augmentative of the Polish name for the garden gnome-style dwarf, mirroring Prof. Tolkien's shift from soft to hard plural form) -- but let's proceed down the rabbit hole...
*** Translating "Strider" as "Łazik". Instead of the proud Strider, we get something like "Rover" as in "lunar rover" or "Land Rover", or worse even, "Stroller" or "Rambler". It sounds just as childish.
*** Trying to localize all the personal and place names. Frodo Baggins of Bag End becomes Frodo Bagosz of Bagoszno. Rivendell became "Tajar", which is supposedly a portmanteau of "Utajony" (hidden, secret) and "Jar" (ravine).
*** And inevitably, he twisted the ''original'' names: to fit his translation of "Brandywine", the river Baranduine turned to Goranduine, twisting the name's meaning from "Brown River" to "River of Dread". Yeah...

*** 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 ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'', it was Merry (called Trufa in the translation) who landed the finishing blow to the Witch-King, not Éowyn.

*** The ones due to the fault of Creator/AkeOhlmarks:
*** The original Swedish translation became infamous, due to a tenuous grasp of English idioms and mistook the meaning of various words. In one sentence, "roamed" was translated as "råmade," which despite phonetic similarity actually means "bellowed" or "mooed." The word "stripped," as used by Orcs, was translated as "piskade," meaning "whipped."[[note]]Ohlmarks was possibly going by the archaic English noun "stripe," or its cognates in other Germanic languages.[[/note]] The idiom "turn over a new leaf, and keep it turned" became "pick a fresh leaf, and hold it in your hand." Tolkien, being a CunningLinguist, wrote to the publisher and sent a blistering blow-by-blow criticism of Ohlmarks' translation, which can be found in ''The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien''.
*** An error that occured in the Hungarian translation also happened in Åke Ohlmarks Swedish translation -- according to him, it was Merry, not Éowyn, who killed the Witch-King.

*** The infamous Polish translations by Jerzy Łoziński, of which that of ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'' is the best known (he also did ''Dune''):

*** In the original, the engraving on the Mirror of [[SdrawkcabName Erised]] is supposed to look like some ancient, mysterious language, but is actually just backwards text with different spacing. The translator apparently didn't realise this and left it in completely unchanged, making it harder for Swedish readers if they wanted to decode it. Later editions fixed this, replacing the backward text of the original with backward text in Swedish.

* ''The Grapes Of Wrath'' was supposedly translated into Japanese as "The Angry Raisins", but (un)fortunately it [[http://www.snopes.com/language/misxlate/raisins.asp is merely an urban legend.]]