December 5, 2024 • 36 mins
Did a mistranslation lead to theories of life on Mars? What exactly was Khrsuschev trying to say at that big U.N. meeting? Language is amazing -- and it's also pretty complicated. As a result, translation is often more an art than an exact science, and over the course of human history mistranslations have led to some astonishing, at-times dangerous, and often ridiculous results. In the second episode of this continuing series, Ben, Noel and Max dive into more bizarre historical mistranslations, from unfortunate car names to that time IKEA accused children of constantly farting, and so much more.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. Let's hear it for our super producer,
mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Oh yeah, yeah, the.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Same in any language, a rose is a rose is
a rose until it is translated incorrectly. You're Noel Brown,
I'm Ben Boland. Do you remember the last time we
talked about famous mistranslations?
Speaker 3 (00:51):
You know, I mentioned in the last episode that I
did not remember, but now I totally remember because Jimmy
Carter really stuck it to the entire nation of Poland
by accident. And may I also add that arose, even mistranslated,
still smells as sweet.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
There we are.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Yes, we talked about our buddy Jimmy pulling for you
for President Carter, as well as Pepsi's hilarious errors trying
to market Pepsi cola in Asia.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
We had to do with ghosts, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
It was like Pepsi brings your ancestors back to life life, yeah,
or bite the wax tadpole, things like that. Check out
our check out our first Famous Mistranslations episode. As we said,
this is kind of a continuing series. We've got way
more funny, strange, downright ridiculous mistranslations. And I bet there's
(01:48):
one in here. I know there is one in here
that you guys are gonna love. Let's dive in true
true story. Life on Mars.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Is their life on Mars? David Bowie seemed to think so.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
But for the purposes of this discussion, let us point
our mind canons backwards in time to eighteen seventy seven,
when an Italian you go.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
When an Italian astronomer.
Speaker 4 (02:20):
By the name of Giovanni Virginio Sia per Parelli Chiaparelli,
there we go, who is the director of the Brera
Observatory in Milan, Milano, he accidentally created a situation rife
for conspiracy theorizing that would be right at home on
(02:40):
our sister pod stuff.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
They don't want you to know.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
This particular conspiracy Schmorgsborg had to do with a very
famous mistranslation.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Yeah, he is looking at the planet Mars. And so
while he's looking at this, and he's a smart guy,
as you said, he's working at this observatory, he says, well,
holy spokes, there are light and dark areas on the
surface and I'm going to call them sees and continents respectively.
(03:11):
And he said, oh, further, I see things that look
to be channels on the surface, and he called these
canali because you know, he speaks Italian.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
Yeah, but unfortunately a lot of his peers in the
scientific community translated that to canals, like man made channels
that would require some sort of intelligent life on Mars
in order to exists. Right, So canali, being Italian and
his translation meaning channel did not intend to describe intelligent creation.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Yeah. Yeah, But the issue is canali translated to canal
in English is more problematic because canal definitely implies some
sort of intelligent design, that's right. And then, of course,
add to that for the average English speaking reader, it
(04:07):
implies there's a lot of water on Mars because of
all the canals.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
That's right, And it absolutely set the scientific world of flame.
US astronomer Percevale Lowell mapped hundreds of these quote unquote
canals between eighteen ninety four and eighteen ninety five and
published three books on Mars' illustrated works over the next
(04:33):
two decades, showing what he thought were artificial structure is
built to carry water by some sort of intelligent race
of like engineers, you know, like from what's that movie
that wasn't so good but had the cool engineer guys, Prometheus.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
That's the yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Yeah. The idea here is that someone had a slight
translation error and then it launched all these other ideas.
This concept of ancient, hyper intelligent alien engineers inspired so
many science fiction writers.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
HG.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Wells in the War of the World describes an invasion
of Earth by deadly Martians and also spawns an entire
subgenre of science fiction that continues today. You can also
see Edgar Reis Burroughs, who was a big deal back
in his time. He writes a novel called Princess of
Mars in nineteen eleven that also shows a dying, super
(05:37):
intelligent Martian civilization and uses get this, all of our
buddy Giovanni's nomenclature for features on Mars.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
Yeah, and it kind of stuck around, capturing the imaginations
of space enthusiasts the world over to the point where
NASA has actually had to spend a little bit of
their pr budget dispellings some of these rumors.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
We've actually got a really great quote from NASA themselves.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
The Network of criss crossing lines covering the surface of
Mars was only a product of the human tendency to
see patterns. Even wind patterns do not exist. When looking
at a faint group of dark smudges, the eye tends
to connect them with straight lines.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
That came from our buddy at NASA named texts. Yes,
and the fancy word for that is apophenia. So shout
out to our pal aj Bahamas Jacobs who taught us
that one.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Yeah, I mean it makes sense.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
We do tend to look for patterns and speech and rhythm,
even you know, when we hear like windshiel wipers syncing
up with the song on the radio.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
It's just something that the human mind kind of strives.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
For, or watching traffic or watching blinker lights exactly.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
There are, of course visual ones and auditory ones, but
the fact is human beings are patterns seeking creature. And
of course, this was far from the first time that
a well meaning scientist had their words twisted into something
of a hyperbolic headline.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Oh yes, yes, history does rhyme. We also want to
go to another one, a cold war Shenanigan. Now, not
to be ageists, but some of our fellow ridiculous. Historians
may recall that in nineteen fifty six, a guy named
Nikita Khrushchev, who was a pretty big deal in Russia
(07:30):
at the time, he said something that was interpreted as
him saying we will bury you, slamming his shoe on
the desk, we will bury you to Western shoe on
the desk to Western ambassadors at a reception at the
Polish embassy in Moscow.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Why did you take a shoe off. That's pretty aggressive.
I would have thought he was saying we will bury
you too. This speech and this misinterpretation had serious repercussions
outside of the event itself and made headlines around the world.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Oh and let me correct this. Khrushev was quite a
public figure. I just want to step back for a second.
He says we will bury you to Western ambassadors in
nineteen fifty six. The alleged shoe banging incident is a
separate thing that happened in New York City in nineteen
sixty but still got it. He's making waves. And if
(08:24):
you want to understand why we consider this a mistranslation, Noel,
can we give everybody the English translation of the entirety
of his statement in nineteen fifty six.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Yeah, you know, it does kind of read like a malapropism,
you know, like where it's someone trying to approximate English slang, right,
but mixing it up a little bit. And then you also,
of course have the extra game of telephone hiccup of
it being a translation, you know, and not even him
(09:01):
attempting to say it in English, but I can totally
picture him trying to say this in English.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Essentially, what he said was, whether you like it or not,
history is on our side. We will dig you in.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
Which I think he's meaning to say like we are
digging in our heels, right, something along those lines, or
we are going to lean in to the version of
history that we see as being on our side.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Yeah, he's really attempting to convey his ideological belief that
communism will outlast capitalism, which is what you have to
say if you're the leader of the Soviet Union at
this time. His entire phrase translates roughly to if you
don't like us, don't accept our invitations and don't invite
(09:44):
us to come see you. Whether you like it or not,
history is on our side.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
We will bury you.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Or as you said, Nol, we will dig you in
This was a reference to Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto. Karl
Marx was a guy from back in the day who
was super into communism.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Yeah, I heard of him.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
The Communist Manifesto argued thusly, what the bourgeoisie therefore produces
above all are its own grave diggers. Yeah, so, I mean,
he's he is kind of saying we will vary you,
but it is referencing a specific work that might have
been I mean, seems to have definitely been lost on
a lot of people listening.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
What we're saying is he was not directly threatening the
United States in a way that many Americans in the
media and in public life sort of assumed. It's not
a call mean phrase. It's definitely agro to your earlier point,
but it's not trying to immediately attack America and Khrushchev himself.
(10:54):
In years following he will clarify his statement there on
more than one a case, but he doesn't do it
until years have passed. In nineteen fifty nine, so like
three years later, he's at the National Press Club in
Washington and he tries to make not quite a male kulpa,
but let's call it a clarification.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
What does he say, Well, he says, the words we
will bury capitalism should not be taken literally, as is
done by ordinary grave diggers. Carry a spade and dig
graves and bury the dead. What are you doing, Khrushev.
What I had in mind was the outlook for the
development of human society. Socialism will inevitably succeed capitalism.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Okay, so we're we kind of get the context there.
He also, yeah, I mean still agro, Still agro, for sure.
He later expands on this in a speech in Yugoslavia
in nineteen sixty three, and this time he says, I
once said we will bury you, and I got into
trouble with it. Of course, we will not bury you
(11:59):
with a shovel. Your own working class will bury you.
Still not great, still not great, but not a direct threat.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
No, not a direct threat. It's true.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
The damage was, though done, and even today a lot
of Americans will not have bothered to read the retraction,
as is usually the case when something is misprinted in
a newspaper, a publication.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Of note, or in a speech that goes wide like this,
taking it.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Too far, which reminds us, of course, of another infamous
translation error. A lot of this, a lot of the
funniest or most ridiculous mistranslations occur not in the world
of state craft, but in the world of private business.
The American Dairy Association launched a campaign back in nineteen
(12:48):
ninety three called got Milk. It's just it's not an
advertisement for a specific brand for like Ben and Jerry's
or Bluebell or whatever, just the idea of milk.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Just the idea of milk.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Do you have it?
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Or are you a loser? And people of a.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
Certain age would have seen this plastered everywhere on billboards,
there were TV commercials, and honestly, even people that didn't
live through it, it really did have a lot of
staying power because it's a pretty damn memorable little catchphrase.
But translating this in as is the case often with
things like slogans that need to be very pithy and
(13:24):
rely on cultural context shout out a million percent, sometimes
there's a little bit of tricksiness when it comes to
translating these in a way that has the same oomph
as intended, but also like means the right thing.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
Right the same context, you know. And I'm of the
mind that most people living in the United States. Even
if they say they don't speak Spanish, they know a
little bit more Spanish than they might assume. You know
what I mean, Oh, for sure, I know that leche
is milk.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Yes, yeah, I do know that.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
And we know that the literal Spanish translation for got
milk translates to something like are you lactating?
Speaker 3 (14:07):
This is the kind of question you might get if
you got a phone call from the Japanese governments if
you're a young a woman. I'm not joking. We've talked
about this recently on stuff that I want you to know.
There's a huge issue with birth rate declines in Japan
and other Asian countries as well, to the point where
I believe representatives from the government are calling up women
(14:28):
personally and asking them if they are with child or
planning on becoming.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
So yeah, yeah, I think that's a Chinese one in
the government of Japan, also to your point, pitched the
idea of just removing uteruses from every female after the
age of thirty.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Which is totally whack on so many levels.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
But also like, if you're a woman that wasn't planning
on having kids anyway, isn't that just kind of a
free hysterectomy. It's very strange. I think we mandatory for histor.
It's not a good guys.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
I'm just saying.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
It just doesn't seem very functional, is what I'm getting.
And it also doesn't seem to help the case that
they're trying to argue for, which is increasing the birth rate.
But that is ridiculous history. I think we unanimously can
agree we don't want that to pass. Just human beings
don't want that to happen. Absolutely not so Luckily for
(15:22):
our pals at the ADA, the American Dairy Association, they
figured out their got milk snafu pretty quickly. They immediately
changed the messaging and thank goodness, learned a little bit
more about Latin culture and the Spanish language. However, another
group didn't do their homework and didn't pay attention. I'm
(15:45):
not too familiar with these folks, but Noel Parker Pen.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
I don't know Parker penn On, assuming they make pens,
and I am glad to report that you are correct.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
The Parker Pen Company was founded in Wisconsin in the
late eighteen hundreds and they make a bunch of pens. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
Maybe because of the NAFU or maybe they had other
pr debacles.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
I don't really know them as a household name. Maybe
they're still around.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
But when Parker Penn's decided to move their business into Mexico,
they had a slogan that in English read it won't
leak in your pocket and embarrass you, which, unfortunately, in
a remarkable translation fail In Spanish, the way they translated.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
It read as it won't leak in your pocket and
make you pregnant.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
Yeah, because in bras are a false cognate in Spanish,
which means to be pregnant better. It's also they're different
versions of how this slogan went wrong. But because in Spanish,
in the Spaniel the word embarrassment is a homonym for pregnancy,
(16:59):
it sounds like like you said, it won't leak in
your pocket and make your pregnant or to avoid pregnancy,
use a Parker pen. Just very weird vibe from your
pen company. Pretty bold claim from running pen prophylactic.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
Here.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Now, we're keeping this kind of a short one today
because we have more on the way. But here's the
one I was teasing that I know you will love
dudes and do debts. Ikea is yes, yes, known for
all sorts of things easily assembled furniture, surprisingly, kick ass
(17:39):
cafeteria like the splarf or the flipped Yes yeah, and
also the fun names which are positively hogan DAWs to
most Americans. Hogandas, by the way, is a made up word. Yeah,
that's just a marketing thing from an American company. So
instead of using product codes to label the stuff they sell,
(18:01):
Ikea uses Swedish names that are meant to emphasize or
highlight a key feature of the product. So the names
for everybody doesn't speak Swedish. They're just cool names, you know, like, oh,
look at that two o's next to each other.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
What a world? Yeah, starfandorth Yes. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
They came out with a children's bench toy kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (18:24):
Vehicles for working with their hammers, their tiny hammers and
things like that for kids.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
It's it's a cute thing. Ikea is great with kids.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
The name of this noel was fart for faar t
f u l l fart full.
Speaker 4 (18:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
And it's funny because you know the German word farfignugen
for example, which is a funny one just means a
love of traveling to drive is fart, like I fart.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Whatever.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
I'm sorry, my German is rusty, but it does mean
to drive or to travel farvig being like the love
of travel. It's really funny too. There was another great
mistranslation that works. It's not a mistranslation honestly though. It
really isn't like. It just means something that is inherent
in the love of traveling. The movie Speed in I
(19:15):
Believe in Europe or in Germany Sweden perhaps was translated
to just fart.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
Nice to remember there was a bomb on the bus. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
If you see the posters for these iterations of branding,
it just says fart.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
That's great man.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
We also know look the work bench, the children's work bench,
fartful was not a bad idea. It's a pretty deep
little design.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Was it made of farts?
Speaker 1 (19:44):
It was made of you know, love particle boards. Probably
someone farted while they were making it.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
It's entirely possible.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
So this hits the United Kingdom first. That's the first
English language or Anglosphere nation. This product is unveiled in
and Ikia gets so embarrassed because everybody's laughing about it.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Fartfull.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
Probably just the awkward mistranslation probably helped sell this product,
but Ikia said, you know, we don't want to.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
We don't want to.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Look like we're a company that says children are constantly farting,
so they pulled it off the market.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
But everybody's not untrue though.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
No, the average human farts seventeen to twenty three times
per twenty four hours. Check out our episode for stuff
they want, you know on fecal transplants, the future of poop,
please do.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
It's not grossed at all. But that then would be
like kind of involuntary farts. If kids they just love
farting so much. I bet you could double that number.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Yeah, I bet you could.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
Let's get our numbers up.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
You could.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
At this point ridiculous. Historians reasonably assume that a lot
of this hilarity is due to good old fashioned human error,
and therefore assume maybe technology will save the day. That
may be the case in the future, but for now
we know computers have caused translation problems all on their own,
(21:20):
especially in the case of Facebook. Oh this is a
sad one.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
Oh for sure, there was sadly, as their often is
in this part of the world.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
A very serious and deadly earthquake in Indonesia in twenty eighteen,
and a lot of people took to social media to,
of course, you know, mark themselves safe from this disaster.
A lot of folks, however, were a little shocked when
Facebook added the little kind of emote feature of balloons
(21:49):
and confetti to some of these posts.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Oof. Yikes.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
It's kind of like when people were still figuring out
how to respect bond with emoji. Two different statements, and
you would see someone who said, you know, a post
about losing a family member or a loved one, and
then at the bottom where you could see the compilation
of emoji reactions, you would see a laugh emoji. And
(22:16):
surely they didn't mean to laugh at it, right, it's tough.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
Surely not. No, it might have been a slip of
the fat finger.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
Yeah, Facebook's uh, spokes folks, said spokes folks, I like
like it. Yeah, they said, look, our company regrets this
celebration of disaster appeared in this unfortunate context, right.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
Because the Indonesian word selamat, which would translate to survive
or be safe, was mistranslated interpreted as being congratulations.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
Yeah, so the algorithm all hailed. The algorithm misinterpreted the
comments and automated balloons in confetti. One is saying, hey,
my family died in this earthquake, or hey we've lost
the house and everything, or hey I'm I'm doing my
(23:09):
best to be alive, and then all the comments would
have balloons.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
Would get that yay, your house is bad anyway, it's
a little rough, you know.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
It reminds me of you know, there are a lot
of these types of mistranslations that are based around computer
stuff these days, especially with auto correct.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Oh yeah, and it's.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
Gotten a lot more machine learning e you know, so
it starts to It can be a little better. It
can predict breaks in your sentences and commas and things
like that. But sometimes there are some pretty funny mistranslations
and potentially not funny. I saw a quite funny story
delivered by Tom York of Radiohead the other day where
he was reading a text sent to somebody as part
(23:53):
of some series where he was reading different letters celebrities
are reading different letters and messages from you know, English City,
And this was a story where a guy was talking
about how he was helping a sixteen year old daughter
with their homework and got a text.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
From mom saying what do you want from life?
Speaker 3 (24:11):
Question mark, at which point he really he and the
child puzzled over this, and we're working on Oh my gosh,
Mom is really in an intense mood. We should respond
and then we better think this through. We don't want
to disappoint her. But before they had a chance to
send it back, she responded, ah, autocorrect, I meant what
do you want from leedal.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Right, I'm passingly familiar with that on my closest brush
with this kind of awkwardness and is a dumb story
was I was texting my mom one day and I
said what I sent her was, or what I meant
this set was I'm thinking of growing a mustache, and autocorrect,
(24:51):
in its infinite wisdom, changed that to I'm thinking of
growing a moist ache, at which point my mom said,
I should a doctor. You probably should if you got
a moist steak mustache, the moist steak come on, Oh.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
Man, God only knows.
Speaker 5 (25:08):
Well.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
I'm glad you guys made it past that potentially awkward
familial moment.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
It's a moist steak and history's big translation cringe moments
aren't just from the past. They're not just from the
Cold War or Jimmy Carter trying to sleep with all
of Poland. As recently as twenty sixteen, we saw this
go wrong in state craft when Canadian politician and leader
Justin Trudeau was at the White House. Is speaking French,
(25:36):
and if you watched him as an American, you would
see him on ABCTV praising things like radio stations in
Motorola or Nazi innings.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
Oh no, yeah, isn't he also the guy that got
in trouble for wearing black face that like a Halloween
party and I think, oh man, this guy can't can't
keep from stepping in it.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
But this was not his fault and I did not
intend to say Nazi innings. What even is that? Did
Nazis even play baseball?
Speaker 1 (26:04):
No, they weren't that cool, according to the According to
ABC later in the aftermath, the mistakes that were made
in translation came from a computer program that was automatically
translating Trudeau's words from French to English, and because it
was a machine and not a person behind the translation,
(26:26):
it didn't get the context of what Trudeau was saying,
and it couldn't read his accent correctly.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
Well that's the thing, man.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
This was back into what twenty sixteen, and with all
the advancements in machine learning and all of that stuff.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
It's still pretty bad.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
If you ever watch auto translated like British comedy on YouTube,
the accents absolutely seemed to perplex these algorithms. Because there's
some of these like Monty Python or whatever where they
have really heavy accents or use some serious British slang.
It is unintelligible when you read the subtitles that are
auto generated.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
Oh yeah, absolutely, and it could happen with pretty much
any dialect of a language, right If I love this
example of watching a streaming service with a show from
maybe rural Australia or something, and you can understand as
a human English speaker what these folks are saying, but
(27:23):
the subtitles are downright confusing because they're missing things due
to pronunciation of words, and the human mind can sort
of connect the dots on its own.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
Well, And you got to wonder too, are they training
these algorithms with English or are there ways to pivot
to an algorithm that is trained with the actual language
that's being translated, that's being you know, transcribed, because you
would really need to the algorithm would need to be
familiar with the way these things.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
Are spoken and not just on paper.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Otherwise it's moist steaks, all moistakes.
Speaker 5 (28:00):
We want.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
We wanted to add the second part of our famous
mistranslation series with one of the trickiest things in the
world of marketing, naming a car. Do you guys ever
think about how weird car names are?
Speaker 3 (28:18):
Well, it's like they're running out of them, you know,
it just seems like they're just getting more and more absurd.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
Some are pretty clearly conveying the brand or the emotive
quality they wish to signal, you know, the Spider, the Viper,
the Mustang, but others are not quite words.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
What the hell is a tourag to eg? How do
you even say it?
Speaker 1 (28:42):
The Yeah, the tourag from Volkswagen or Wolfswagen. Yes, it's
tough because you know, cars are part of a global
industry now, and the car market itself overall stretches around
the world. But even the best car names of one
(29:03):
language can be confusing or downright ridiculous in another. This
is where we have to shout out our good pals
at Ford. Yeah, they get a double ridiculous award for
this one. Ben Wishoe coined, which we should definitely make
a thing. First, they've got the slogan.
Speaker 3 (29:22):
Again, slogans are tricky because it's like translating Bible versus.
There is so much license that can be taken that
can really change the vibe of something that's meant to
be very pithy and to the point.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
Right.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
That's why people whose jobs it is to translate historical
texts or works of literature, the nuance is everything, and
individuals like the King James, for example, can kind of
steer the narrative of how something will be interpreted for
generations based on the way they choose to translate something.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
One hundred percent. Also, Toreg for Volkswagen is a misspelling
slash homage to an ethnic group from northern Africa called
the Tareg people.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
Okay, but that's cool, I guess, But why would you.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
Why would you say with your buide to Volkswagen.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
You know, again, I think that I think they're just
running out of words. But every car has a high
quality body.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
Which is one of the most boring slogans I could
possibly imagine.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
I think they've moved on from that one. But also
the word body.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
Guys, I'm pretty sure we're going to run into some
problems with body.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
Yeah, it turns out that over in Belgium would be
Ford consumers ran into a slogan that said every car
has a high quality corpse.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (30:46):
I mean that, And it makes sense because I can say, man,
you've sure got a hot body, or what what are
you doing with a body in your trunk? Or I'm
taking my car to the body shop. Like it is
all about the context and the nuance. And we as
Americans do have single words that often can mean nine
different things depending on where you emphasize it or what.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
We're just rounding.
Speaker 3 (31:07):
I'm sure that's true in other languages too, but I
do think that we may be the worst at it.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
I think we're neck and neck with several other languages.
It's just the thing is, you're not wrong. We could
just argue no one's doing it particularly well at this
point in twenty twenty four. I think of the Pinto,
the Ford Pinto. It's not the most impressive car.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
You know what I mean? What about the Nino and
the Santa Maria. Yeah, what happened to it was great?
Speaker 1 (31:39):
Yeah, the Ford wanted to sell this thing they saw
as an economical car, not top of the line. It's
not meant to be for the one percenters. It's meant
to be for the working class, the folks who have
a job, they need dependable transportation. The Pinto is not
too showy. It seems like a good fit.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
The bottle.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
Well, it's a stand in for kind of a cheap car.
People talk about the Pento now and it sort of
becomes this like catch all for like a shitty car.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
And the boffins at Ford are looking at international markets
and they say, you know who's gonna love the Pinto
the nation of Brazil.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
And so they deploy this.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
They're surprised because they're not selling this very well, what's
going on? Yeah, that's when they learned. They finally did
the research they should have done, and they said, oh, Brazil,
you know, the dominant language is Portuguese. Pinto is local
slaying for a guy with a small.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (32:43):
I mean it's typically a guy with a small penis
would buy like a Mustang or a Lamborghini or a yeah,
a hummer. Indeed, it's the whole compensation thing, right, A
Pento would probably be the last choice of a man
with a small penis. And they were not speaking to
their audience at all and or nobody wanted to drive
around a vehicle and ploy that they had a small penis.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
This is way before the success of the hip hop
phenomenon Little Dicky, right, which was owning that kind of stuff.
So forward to their credit.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
As soon as they find this out, they should have
been a pivot. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
They they they pivoted their Pintos and they replaced all
the insignia and advertising. They renamed it the Corsello, which
means horse like.
Speaker 2 (33:28):
Yeah. Yeah, they're doing a little compensating themselves.
Speaker 3 (33:33):
Oh yes, a big strong like horse, you know, like,
oh man, all you people that were offended by the
Penso now we're speaking to you guys just to jump
in here, because the Pinto is a joke amongst my
family very much.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
Being from Detroit, weh, what's a joke?
Speaker 4 (33:47):
Car?
Speaker 2 (33:47):
Kind of? I mean, because it was a bit of
a lemon, wasn't it. Well, do you guys know what
the flow with the Pinto was? That was what I
was wondering if.
Speaker 5 (33:55):
Yeah, the gas tank in the rear, so if you're
ended a Pinto, there was a chance you would explode.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
That's no good. Yeah, And it happened a couple of
times too.
Speaker 5 (34:03):
Yeah, yeah, very badly designed.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
It reminds me, uh in some ways.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
You know, these cars acquire personality as part of their brand,
and it reminds me of how the Miata is just
not popular outside of a.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
Very particular group of people.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
And that's not translation error, that's that's just the vibe
of the Miata.
Speaker 5 (34:27):
My buddy Ian, his h Mustang, was in the shop
recently and so he was driving his mom's Miada around
and I asked about of us, sowere's your opinion.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
He's like, I don't know, man, everyone hates these cars.
This thing's fun.
Speaker 5 (34:37):
I'm like, yeah, you're in the minority then, man, well
they are.
Speaker 3 (34:40):
I mean, if anyone hasn't seen the Miyata, they are dainty,
little petite convertible.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
They're special little boys, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
They're special boys.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
And this is our this is our episode on famous mistranslations.
We have more on the way. We can't wait to
hear yours. H be careful. There's a lot of scuttle,
but some of this is alleged. Sometimes the marketing gurus
tell the story with a little bit of on it,
(35:08):
but visit us over ridiculous historians on Facebook and let
us know some of your favorite experiences. Shout out to
our super producer, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 3 (35:18):
Indeed, and shout out to Alex Williams who composed our
theme Boop.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
East, Jeffco, Chris Vassiotis here in Spirits, the one and
only Jonathan Strickland aka the Quister. You may have heard
our recent news from an earlier episode this week. I
don't even want to.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
Do the jokes I was gonna do at this point.
Now it's far too filthy. Yeah, far too filthy. Oh Man.
Speaker 3 (35:46):
Huge thanks to aj Bahamas, Jacobs the Puzzler, as well
as Chris Frosciotis and EEFs Jeff Cos here in spirit
Big big.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
Thanks to Gave Lucier. If you like this show, check
out Ridiculous Crime featuring the Rude Dudes themselves, Zarin Elizabeth
and super producer Dave and Noel. You know, beyond any language.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
Thank you very much, Love in any language, straight from
the heart Ben. We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 3 (36:20):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. Let's hear it for our super producer,
mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Oh yeah, yeah, the.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Same in any language, a rose is a rose is
a rose until it is translated incorrectly. You're Noel Brown,
I'm Ben Boland. Do you remember the last time we
talked about famous mistranslations?
Speaker 3 (00:51):
You know, I mentioned in the last episode that I
did not remember, but now I totally remember because Jimmy
Carter really stuck it to the entire nation of Poland
by accident. And may I also add that arose, even mistranslated,
still smells as sweet.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
There we are.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Yes, we talked about our buddy Jimmy pulling for you
for President Carter, as well as Pepsi's hilarious errors trying
to market Pepsi cola in Asia.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
We had to do with ghosts, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
It was like Pepsi brings your ancestors back to life life, yeah,
or bite the wax tadpole, things like that. Check out
our check out our first Famous Mistranslations episode. As we said,
this is kind of a continuing series. We've got way
more funny, strange, downright ridiculous mistranslations. And I bet there's
(01:48):
one in here. I know there is one in here
that you guys are gonna love. Let's dive in true
true story. Life on Mars.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Is their life on Mars? David Bowie seemed to think so.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
But for the purposes of this discussion, let us point
our mind canons backwards in time to eighteen seventy seven,
when an Italian you go.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
When an Italian astronomer.
Speaker 4 (02:20):
By the name of Giovanni Virginio Sia per Parelli Chiaparelli,
there we go, who is the director of the Brera
Observatory in Milan, Milano, he accidentally created a situation rife
for conspiracy theorizing that would be right at home on
(02:40):
our sister pod stuff.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
They don't want you to know.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
This particular conspiracy Schmorgsborg had to do with a very
famous mistranslation.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Yeah, he is looking at the planet Mars. And so
while he's looking at this, and he's a smart guy,
as you said, he's working at this observatory, he says, well,
holy spokes, there are light and dark areas on the
surface and I'm going to call them sees and continents respectively.
(03:11):
And he said, oh, further, I see things that look
to be channels on the surface, and he called these
canali because you know, he speaks Italian.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
Yeah, but unfortunately a lot of his peers in the
scientific community translated that to canals, like man made channels
that would require some sort of intelligent life on Mars
in order to exists. Right, So canali, being Italian and
his translation meaning channel did not intend to describe intelligent creation.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Yeah. Yeah, But the issue is canali translated to canal
in English is more problematic because canal definitely implies some
sort of intelligent design, that's right. And then, of course,
add to that for the average English speaking reader, it
(04:07):
implies there's a lot of water on Mars because of
all the canals.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
That's right, And it absolutely set the scientific world of flame.
US astronomer Percevale Lowell mapped hundreds of these quote unquote
canals between eighteen ninety four and eighteen ninety five and
published three books on Mars' illustrated works over the next
(04:33):
two decades, showing what he thought were artificial structure is
built to carry water by some sort of intelligent race
of like engineers, you know, like from what's that movie
that wasn't so good but had the cool engineer guys, Prometheus.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
That's the yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Yeah. The idea here is that someone had a slight
translation error and then it launched all these other ideas.
This concept of ancient, hyper intelligent alien engineers inspired so
many science fiction writers.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
HG.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Wells in the War of the World describes an invasion
of Earth by deadly Martians and also spawns an entire
subgenre of science fiction that continues today. You can also
see Edgar Reis Burroughs, who was a big deal back
in his time. He writes a novel called Princess of
Mars in nineteen eleven that also shows a dying, super
(05:37):
intelligent Martian civilization and uses get this, all of our
buddy Giovanni's nomenclature for features on Mars.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
Yeah, and it kind of stuck around, capturing the imaginations
of space enthusiasts the world over to the point where
NASA has actually had to spend a little bit of
their pr budget dispellings some of these rumors.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
We've actually got a really great quote from NASA themselves.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
The Network of criss crossing lines covering the surface of
Mars was only a product of the human tendency to
see patterns. Even wind patterns do not exist. When looking
at a faint group of dark smudges, the eye tends
to connect them with straight lines.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
That came from our buddy at NASA named texts. Yes,
and the fancy word for that is apophenia. So shout
out to our pal aj Bahamas Jacobs who taught us
that one.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Yeah, I mean it makes sense.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
We do tend to look for patterns and speech and rhythm,
even you know, when we hear like windshiel wipers syncing
up with the song on the radio.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
It's just something that the human mind kind of strives.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
For, or watching traffic or watching blinker lights exactly.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
There are, of course visual ones and auditory ones, but
the fact is human beings are patterns seeking creature. And
of course, this was far from the first time that
a well meaning scientist had their words twisted into something
of a hyperbolic headline.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Oh yes, yes, history does rhyme. We also want to
go to another one, a cold war Shenanigan. Now, not
to be ageists, but some of our fellow ridiculous. Historians
may recall that in nineteen fifty six, a guy named
Nikita Khrushchev, who was a pretty big deal in Russia
(07:30):
at the time, he said something that was interpreted as
him saying we will bury you, slamming his shoe on
the desk, we will bury you to Western shoe on
the desk to Western ambassadors at a reception at the
Polish embassy in Moscow.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Why did you take a shoe off. That's pretty aggressive.
I would have thought he was saying we will bury
you too. This speech and this misinterpretation had serious repercussions
outside of the event itself and made headlines around the world.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Oh and let me correct this. Khrushev was quite a
public figure. I just want to step back for a second.
He says we will bury you to Western ambassadors in
nineteen fifty six. The alleged shoe banging incident is a
separate thing that happened in New York City in nineteen
sixty but still got it. He's making waves. And if
(08:24):
you want to understand why we consider this a mistranslation, Noel,
can we give everybody the English translation of the entirety
of his statement in nineteen fifty six.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Yeah, you know, it does kind of read like a malapropism,
you know, like where it's someone trying to approximate English slang, right,
but mixing it up a little bit. And then you also,
of course have the extra game of telephone hiccup of
it being a translation, you know, and not even him
(09:01):
attempting to say it in English, but I can totally
picture him trying to say this in English.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Essentially, what he said was, whether you like it or not,
history is on our side. We will dig you in.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
Which I think he's meaning to say like we are
digging in our heels, right, something along those lines, or
we are going to lean in to the version of
history that we see as being on our side.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Yeah, he's really attempting to convey his ideological belief that
communism will outlast capitalism, which is what you have to
say if you're the leader of the Soviet Union at
this time. His entire phrase translates roughly to if you
don't like us, don't accept our invitations and don't invite
(09:44):
us to come see you. Whether you like it or not,
history is on our side.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
We will bury you.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Or as you said, Nol, we will dig you in
This was a reference to Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto. Karl
Marx was a guy from back in the day who
was super into communism.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Yeah, I heard of him.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
The Communist Manifesto argued thusly, what the bourgeoisie therefore produces
above all are its own grave diggers. Yeah, so, I mean,
he's he is kind of saying we will vary you,
but it is referencing a specific work that might have
been I mean, seems to have definitely been lost on
a lot of people listening.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
What we're saying is he was not directly threatening the
United States in a way that many Americans in the
media and in public life sort of assumed. It's not
a call mean phrase. It's definitely agro to your earlier point,
but it's not trying to immediately attack America and Khrushchev himself.
(10:54):
In years following he will clarify his statement there on
more than one a case, but he doesn't do it
until years have passed. In nineteen fifty nine, so like
three years later, he's at the National Press Club in
Washington and he tries to make not quite a male kulpa,
but let's call it a clarification.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
What does he say, Well, he says, the words we
will bury capitalism should not be taken literally, as is
done by ordinary grave diggers. Carry a spade and dig
graves and bury the dead. What are you doing, Khrushev.
What I had in mind was the outlook for the
development of human society. Socialism will inevitably succeed capitalism.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Okay, so we're we kind of get the context there.
He also, yeah, I mean still agro, Still agro, for sure.
He later expands on this in a speech in Yugoslavia
in nineteen sixty three, and this time he says, I
once said we will bury you, and I got into
trouble with it. Of course, we will not bury you
(11:59):
with a shovel. Your own working class will bury you.
Still not great, still not great, but not a direct threat.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
No, not a direct threat. It's true.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
The damage was, though done, and even today a lot
of Americans will not have bothered to read the retraction,
as is usually the case when something is misprinted in
a newspaper, a publication.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Of note, or in a speech that goes wide like this,
taking it.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Too far, which reminds us, of course, of another infamous
translation error. A lot of this, a lot of the
funniest or most ridiculous mistranslations occur not in the world
of state craft, but in the world of private business.
The American Dairy Association launched a campaign back in nineteen
(12:48):
ninety three called got Milk. It's just it's not an
advertisement for a specific brand for like Ben and Jerry's
or Bluebell or whatever, just the idea of milk.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Just the idea of milk.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Do you have it?
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Or are you a loser? And people of a.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
Certain age would have seen this plastered everywhere on billboards,
there were TV commercials, and honestly, even people that didn't
live through it, it really did have a lot of
staying power because it's a pretty damn memorable little catchphrase.
But translating this in as is the case often with
things like slogans that need to be very pithy and
(13:24):
rely on cultural context shout out a million percent, sometimes
there's a little bit of tricksiness when it comes to
translating these in a way that has the same oomph
as intended, but also like means the right thing.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
Right the same context, you know. And I'm of the
mind that most people living in the United States. Even
if they say they don't speak Spanish, they know a
little bit more Spanish than they might assume. You know
what I mean, Oh, for sure, I know that leche
is milk.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Yes, yeah, I do know that.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
And we know that the literal Spanish translation for got
milk translates to something like are you lactating?
Speaker 3 (14:07):
This is the kind of question you might get if
you got a phone call from the Japanese governments if
you're a young a woman. I'm not joking. We've talked
about this recently on stuff that I want you to know.
There's a huge issue with birth rate declines in Japan
and other Asian countries as well, to the point where
I believe representatives from the government are calling up women
(14:28):
personally and asking them if they are with child or
planning on becoming.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
So yeah, yeah, I think that's a Chinese one in
the government of Japan, also to your point, pitched the
idea of just removing uteruses from every female after the
age of thirty.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Which is totally whack on so many levels.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
But also like, if you're a woman that wasn't planning
on having kids anyway, isn't that just kind of a
free hysterectomy. It's very strange. I think we mandatory for histor.
It's not a good guys.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
I'm just saying.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
It just doesn't seem very functional, is what I'm getting.
And it also doesn't seem to help the case that
they're trying to argue for, which is increasing the birth rate.
But that is ridiculous history. I think we unanimously can
agree we don't want that to pass. Just human beings
don't want that to happen. Absolutely not so Luckily for
(15:22):
our pals at the ADA, the American Dairy Association, they
figured out their got milk snafu pretty quickly. They immediately
changed the messaging and thank goodness, learned a little bit
more about Latin culture and the Spanish language. However, another
group didn't do their homework and didn't pay attention. I'm
(15:45):
not too familiar with these folks, but Noel Parker Pen.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
I don't know Parker penn On, assuming they make pens,
and I am glad to report that you are correct.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
The Parker Pen Company was founded in Wisconsin in the
late eighteen hundreds and they make a bunch of pens. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
Maybe because of the NAFU or maybe they had other
pr debacles.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
I don't really know them as a household name. Maybe
they're still around.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
But when Parker Penn's decided to move their business into Mexico,
they had a slogan that in English read it won't
leak in your pocket and embarrass you, which, unfortunately, in
a remarkable translation fail In Spanish, the way they translated.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
It read as it won't leak in your pocket and
make you pregnant.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
Yeah, because in bras are a false cognate in Spanish,
which means to be pregnant better. It's also they're different
versions of how this slogan went wrong. But because in Spanish,
in the Spaniel the word embarrassment is a homonym for pregnancy,
(16:59):
it sounds like like you said, it won't leak in
your pocket and make your pregnant or to avoid pregnancy,
use a Parker pen. Just very weird vibe from your
pen company. Pretty bold claim from running pen prophylactic.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
Here.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Now, we're keeping this kind of a short one today
because we have more on the way. But here's the
one I was teasing that I know you will love
dudes and do debts. Ikea is yes, yes, known for
all sorts of things easily assembled furniture, surprisingly, kick ass
(17:39):
cafeteria like the splarf or the flipped Yes yeah, and
also the fun names which are positively hogan DAWs to
most Americans. Hogandas, by the way, is a made up word. Yeah,
that's just a marketing thing from an American company. So
instead of using product codes to label the stuff they sell,
(18:01):
Ikea uses Swedish names that are meant to emphasize or
highlight a key feature of the product. So the names
for everybody doesn't speak Swedish. They're just cool names, you know, like, oh,
look at that two o's next to each other.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
What a world? Yeah, starfandorth Yes. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
They came out with a children's bench toy kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (18:24):
Vehicles for working with their hammers, their tiny hammers and
things like that for kids.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
It's it's a cute thing. Ikea is great with kids.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
The name of this noel was fart for faar t
f u l l fart full.
Speaker 4 (18:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
And it's funny because you know the German word farfignugen
for example, which is a funny one just means a
love of traveling to drive is fart, like I fart.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Whatever.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
I'm sorry, my German is rusty, but it does mean
to drive or to travel farvig being like the love
of travel. It's really funny too. There was another great
mistranslation that works. It's not a mistranslation honestly though. It
really isn't like. It just means something that is inherent
in the love of traveling. The movie Speed in I
(19:15):
Believe in Europe or in Germany Sweden perhaps was translated
to just fart.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
Nice to remember there was a bomb on the bus. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
If you see the posters for these iterations of branding,
it just says fart.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
That's great man.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
We also know look the work bench, the children's work bench,
fartful was not a bad idea. It's a pretty deep
little design.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Was it made of farts?
Speaker 1 (19:44):
It was made of you know, love particle boards. Probably
someone farted while they were making it.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
It's entirely possible.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
So this hits the United Kingdom first. That's the first
English language or Anglosphere nation. This product is unveiled in
and Ikia gets so embarrassed because everybody's laughing about it.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Fartfull.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
Probably just the awkward mistranslation probably helped sell this product,
but Ikia said, you know, we don't want to.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
We don't want to.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Look like we're a company that says children are constantly farting,
so they pulled it off the market.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
But everybody's not untrue though.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
No, the average human farts seventeen to twenty three times
per twenty four hours. Check out our episode for stuff
they want, you know on fecal transplants, the future of poop,
please do.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
It's not grossed at all. But that then would be
like kind of involuntary farts. If kids they just love
farting so much. I bet you could double that number.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Yeah, I bet you could.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
Let's get our numbers up.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
You could.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
At this point ridiculous. Historians reasonably assume that a lot
of this hilarity is due to good old fashioned human error,
and therefore assume maybe technology will save the day. That
may be the case in the future, but for now
we know computers have caused translation problems all on their own,
(21:20):
especially in the case of Facebook. Oh this is a
sad one.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
Oh for sure, there was sadly, as their often is
in this part of the world.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
A very serious and deadly earthquake in Indonesia in twenty eighteen,
and a lot of people took to social media to,
of course, you know, mark themselves safe from this disaster.
A lot of folks, however, were a little shocked when
Facebook added the little kind of emote feature of balloons
(21:49):
and confetti to some of these posts.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Oof. Yikes.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
It's kind of like when people were still figuring out
how to respect bond with emoji. Two different statements, and
you would see someone who said, you know, a post
about losing a family member or a loved one, and
then at the bottom where you could see the compilation
of emoji reactions, you would see a laugh emoji. And
(22:16):
surely they didn't mean to laugh at it, right, it's tough.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
Surely not. No, it might have been a slip of
the fat finger.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
Yeah, Facebook's uh, spokes folks, said spokes folks, I like
like it. Yeah, they said, look, our company regrets this
celebration of disaster appeared in this unfortunate context, right.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
Because the Indonesian word selamat, which would translate to survive
or be safe, was mistranslated interpreted as being congratulations.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
Yeah, so the algorithm all hailed. The algorithm misinterpreted the
comments and automated balloons in confetti. One is saying, hey,
my family died in this earthquake, or hey we've lost
the house and everything, or hey I'm I'm doing my
(23:09):
best to be alive, and then all the comments would
have balloons.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
Would get that yay, your house is bad anyway, it's
a little rough, you know.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
It reminds me of you know, there are a lot
of these types of mistranslations that are based around computer
stuff these days, especially with auto correct.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Oh yeah, and it's.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
Gotten a lot more machine learning e you know, so
it starts to It can be a little better. It
can predict breaks in your sentences and commas and things
like that. But sometimes there are some pretty funny mistranslations
and potentially not funny. I saw a quite funny story
delivered by Tom York of Radiohead the other day where
he was reading a text sent to somebody as part
(23:53):
of some series where he was reading different letters celebrities
are reading different letters and messages from you know, English City,
And this was a story where a guy was talking
about how he was helping a sixteen year old daughter
with their homework and got a text.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
From mom saying what do you want from life?
Speaker 3 (24:11):
Question mark, at which point he really he and the
child puzzled over this, and we're working on Oh my gosh,
Mom is really in an intense mood. We should respond
and then we better think this through. We don't want
to disappoint her. But before they had a chance to
send it back, she responded, ah, autocorrect, I meant what
do you want from leedal.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Right, I'm passingly familiar with that on my closest brush
with this kind of awkwardness and is a dumb story
was I was texting my mom one day and I
said what I sent her was, or what I meant
this set was I'm thinking of growing a mustache, and autocorrect,
(24:51):
in its infinite wisdom, changed that to I'm thinking of
growing a moist ache, at which point my mom said,
I should a doctor. You probably should if you got
a moist steak mustache, the moist steak come on, Oh.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
Man, God only knows.
Speaker 5 (25:08):
Well.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
I'm glad you guys made it past that potentially awkward
familial moment.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
It's a moist steak and history's big translation cringe moments
aren't just from the past. They're not just from the
Cold War or Jimmy Carter trying to sleep with all
of Poland. As recently as twenty sixteen, we saw this
go wrong in state craft when Canadian politician and leader
Justin Trudeau was at the White House. Is speaking French,
(25:36):
and if you watched him as an American, you would
see him on ABCTV praising things like radio stations in
Motorola or Nazi innings.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
Oh no, yeah, isn't he also the guy that got
in trouble for wearing black face that like a Halloween
party and I think, oh man, this guy can't can't
keep from stepping in it.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
But this was not his fault and I did not
intend to say Nazi innings. What even is that? Did
Nazis even play baseball?
Speaker 1 (26:04):
No, they weren't that cool, according to the According to
ABC later in the aftermath, the mistakes that were made
in translation came from a computer program that was automatically
translating Trudeau's words from French to English, and because it
was a machine and not a person behind the translation,
(26:26):
it didn't get the context of what Trudeau was saying,
and it couldn't read his accent correctly.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
Well that's the thing, man.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
This was back into what twenty sixteen, and with all
the advancements in machine learning and all of that stuff.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
It's still pretty bad.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
If you ever watch auto translated like British comedy on YouTube,
the accents absolutely seemed to perplex these algorithms. Because there's
some of these like Monty Python or whatever where they
have really heavy accents or use some serious British slang.
It is unintelligible when you read the subtitles that are
auto generated.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
Oh yeah, absolutely, and it could happen with pretty much
any dialect of a language, right If I love this
example of watching a streaming service with a show from
maybe rural Australia or something, and you can understand as
a human English speaker what these folks are saying, but
(27:23):
the subtitles are downright confusing because they're missing things due
to pronunciation of words, and the human mind can sort
of connect the dots on its own.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
Well, And you got to wonder too, are they training
these algorithms with English or are there ways to pivot
to an algorithm that is trained with the actual language
that's being translated, that's being you know, transcribed, because you
would really need to the algorithm would need to be
familiar with the way these things.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
Are spoken and not just on paper.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Otherwise it's moist steaks, all moistakes.
Speaker 5 (28:00):
We want.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
We wanted to add the second part of our famous
mistranslation series with one of the trickiest things in the
world of marketing, naming a car. Do you guys ever
think about how weird car names are?
Speaker 3 (28:18):
Well, it's like they're running out of them, you know,
it just seems like they're just getting more and more absurd.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
Some are pretty clearly conveying the brand or the emotive
quality they wish to signal, you know, the Spider, the Viper,
the Mustang, but others are not quite words.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
What the hell is a tourag to eg? How do
you even say it?
Speaker 1 (28:42):
The Yeah, the tourag from Volkswagen or Wolfswagen. Yes, it's
tough because you know, cars are part of a global
industry now, and the car market itself overall stretches around
the world. But even the best car names of one
(29:03):
language can be confusing or downright ridiculous in another. This
is where we have to shout out our good pals
at Ford. Yeah, they get a double ridiculous award for
this one. Ben Wishoe coined, which we should definitely make
a thing. First, they've got the slogan.
Speaker 3 (29:22):
Again, slogans are tricky because it's like translating Bible versus.
There is so much license that can be taken that
can really change the vibe of something that's meant to
be very pithy and to the point.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
Right.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
That's why people whose jobs it is to translate historical
texts or works of literature, the nuance is everything, and
individuals like the King James, for example, can kind of
steer the narrative of how something will be interpreted for
generations based on the way they choose to translate something.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
One hundred percent. Also, Toreg for Volkswagen is a misspelling
slash homage to an ethnic group from northern Africa called
the Tareg people.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
Okay, but that's cool, I guess, But why would you.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
Why would you say with your buide to Volkswagen.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
You know, again, I think that I think they're just
running out of words. But every car has a high
quality body.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
Which is one of the most boring slogans I could
possibly imagine.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
I think they've moved on from that one. But also
the word body.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
Guys, I'm pretty sure we're going to run into some
problems with body.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
Yeah, it turns out that over in Belgium would be
Ford consumers ran into a slogan that said every car
has a high quality corpse.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (30:46):
I mean that, And it makes sense because I can say, man,
you've sure got a hot body, or what what are
you doing with a body in your trunk? Or I'm
taking my car to the body shop. Like it is
all about the context and the nuance. And we as
Americans do have single words that often can mean nine
different things depending on where you emphasize it or what.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
We're just rounding.
Speaker 3 (31:07):
I'm sure that's true in other languages too, but I
do think that we may be the worst at it.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
I think we're neck and neck with several other languages.
It's just the thing is, you're not wrong. We could
just argue no one's doing it particularly well at this
point in twenty twenty four. I think of the Pinto,
the Ford Pinto. It's not the most impressive car.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
You know what I mean? What about the Nino and
the Santa Maria. Yeah, what happened to it was great?
Speaker 1 (31:39):
Yeah, the Ford wanted to sell this thing they saw
as an economical car, not top of the line. It's
not meant to be for the one percenters. It's meant
to be for the working class, the folks who have
a job, they need dependable transportation. The Pinto is not
too showy. It seems like a good fit.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
The bottle.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
Well, it's a stand in for kind of a cheap car.
People talk about the Pento now and it sort of
becomes this like catch all for like a shitty car.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
And the boffins at Ford are looking at international markets
and they say, you know who's gonna love the Pinto
the nation of Brazil.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
And so they deploy this.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
They're surprised because they're not selling this very well, what's
going on? Yeah, that's when they learned. They finally did
the research they should have done, and they said, oh, Brazil,
you know, the dominant language is Portuguese. Pinto is local
slaying for a guy with a small.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (32:43):
I mean it's typically a guy with a small penis
would buy like a Mustang or a Lamborghini or a yeah,
a hummer. Indeed, it's the whole compensation thing, right, A
Pento would probably be the last choice of a man
with a small penis. And they were not speaking to
their audience at all and or nobody wanted to drive
around a vehicle and ploy that they had a small penis.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
This is way before the success of the hip hop
phenomenon Little Dicky, right, which was owning that kind of stuff.
So forward to their credit.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
As soon as they find this out, they should have
been a pivot. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
They they they pivoted their Pintos and they replaced all
the insignia and advertising. They renamed it the Corsello, which
means horse like.
Speaker 2 (33:28):
Yeah. Yeah, they're doing a little compensating themselves.
Speaker 3 (33:33):
Oh yes, a big strong like horse, you know, like,
oh man, all you people that were offended by the
Penso now we're speaking to you guys just to jump
in here, because the Pinto is a joke amongst my
family very much.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
Being from Detroit, weh, what's a joke?
Speaker 4 (33:47):
Car?
Speaker 2 (33:47):
Kind of? I mean, because it was a bit of
a lemon, wasn't it. Well, do you guys know what
the flow with the Pinto was? That was what I
was wondering if.
Speaker 5 (33:55):
Yeah, the gas tank in the rear, so if you're
ended a Pinto, there was a chance you would explode.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
That's no good. Yeah, And it happened a couple of
times too.
Speaker 5 (34:03):
Yeah, yeah, very badly designed.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
It reminds me, uh in some ways.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
You know, these cars acquire personality as part of their brand,
and it reminds me of how the Miata is just
not popular outside of a.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
Very particular group of people.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
And that's not translation error, that's that's just the vibe
of the Miata.
Speaker 5 (34:27):
My buddy Ian, his h Mustang, was in the shop
recently and so he was driving his mom's Miada around
and I asked about of us, sowere's your opinion.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
He's like, I don't know, man, everyone hates these cars.
This thing's fun.
Speaker 5 (34:37):
I'm like, yeah, you're in the minority then, man, well
they are.
Speaker 3 (34:40):
I mean, if anyone hasn't seen the Miyata, they are dainty,
little petite convertible.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
They're special little boys, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
They're special boys.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
And this is our this is our episode on famous mistranslations.
We have more on the way. We can't wait to
hear yours. H be careful. There's a lot of scuttle,
but some of this is alleged. Sometimes the marketing gurus
tell the story with a little bit of on it,
(35:08):
but visit us over ridiculous historians on Facebook and let
us know some of your favorite experiences. Shout out to
our super producer, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 3 (35:18):
Indeed, and shout out to Alex Williams who composed our
theme Boop.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
East, Jeffco, Chris Vassiotis here in Spirits, the one and
only Jonathan Strickland aka the Quister. You may have heard
our recent news from an earlier episode this week. I
don't even want to.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
Do the jokes I was gonna do at this point.
Now it's far too filthy. Yeah, far too filthy. Oh Man.
Speaker 3 (35:46):
Huge thanks to aj Bahamas, Jacobs the Puzzler, as well
as Chris Frosciotis and EEFs Jeff Cos here in spirit
Big big.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
Thanks to Gave Lucier. If you like this show, check
out Ridiculous Crime featuring the Rude Dudes themselves, Zarin Elizabeth
and super producer Dave and Noel. You know, beyond any language.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
Thank you very much, Love in any language, straight from
the heart Ben. We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 3 (36:20):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Monster: BTK
'Monster: BTK', the newest installment in the 'Monster' franchise, reveals the true story of the Wichita, Kansas serial killer who murdered at least 10 people between 1974 and 1991. Known by the moniker, BTK – Bind Torture Kill, his notoriety was bolstered by the taunting letters he sent to police, and the chilling phone calls he made to media outlets. BTK's identity was finally revealed in 2005 to the shock of his family, his community, and the world. He was the serial killer next door. From Tenderfoot TV & iHeartPodcasts, this is 'Monster: BTK'.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.