Saturday, July 25, 2020

Tumblr Thread: Hilarious Translation Fails From A Summer Camp Book


This fun Tumblr thread captures the hilarious misunderstandings that can result from translating an English book. In this case, it's an innocent book about summer camp that results in all kinds of misinterpreted sentences. Sometimes getting lost in those translations is a fun business. It would be just a little frightening if one had chipmunks ("tiny wolves") running around their summer camp. Check out more completely random, strange, and hilarious Tumblr gems over here.

1.

Text - hedgehog-moss One of the first books I read in English as a kid, maybe 1 year after I started leaming English, was a booklet with a title like, How to Have a Great Time at Summer Camp. I don't remember the exact title and I know I only picked it up because the other books in English in my school's library looked way beyond my level, stuff like Austen and Dickens. The summer camp booklet didn't look to0 interesting but it was small with simple sentences. I ended up being fascinated with it

2.

Text - 3. I had no idea that the word "pet" could mean "favourite". When the booklet said one kid might become "the camp counsellor's pet", my dictionary helpfully led me to believe it meant that a psychologist would pick one unfortunate kid to be his domestic animal for the summer. Slightly disturbing. I moved on 4. the kids slept in "bunks" and my stupid dictionary only defined this word as "couche". Which is not wrong, but we would probably say couchette instead, or better yet lits superposés

3.

Text - queueing up for lunch and I was like "What do you think?" and my friend said hesitantly, "Maybe if it's a small diamond?" and I insisted "No! The book says it's big!" 6. among the basic items the book said every kid should bring to camp were "batteries". I didn't bother looking up that word in my dictionary seeing as it's the same in French. I didn't know it was a false friend, and I was impressed to learn that most American kids own a drum set and bring it to camp as an essential item 7.

4.

Text - what-even-is-thiss This is delightful. Thank you for sharing. wreck-it-remy2 I've never been to camp like what OP is describing so I get a lot of this. But I do not understand number 6 at all. batteries are portable electricity to power electronics such as music players, radios, and flashlilights. I have no idea what "false friend" means in this context, but I'm guessing it isn't another way to say fake friend, also known as someone you know who pretends to be your friend. I have no idea

5.

Text - what-even-is-thiss A false friend in language learning is two words in different languages that are pronounced the same but have totally different meanings. Like the Spanish word educado and the English word educated sound quite similar but they have completely different meanings. Educado means polite. I'm no French speaker but I'm assuming from this post that the French word for drums sounds very similar to the English word battery. lugooble Two things: a. This made my day, thx and b. Th

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