Lost in Translation: Protégez-vous

General discussion about learning languages
Speakeasy
x 7658

Lost in Translation: Protégez-vous

Postby Speakeasy » Sun Jun 18, 2017 5:15 pm

Protégez-vous is a Québec-based publisher of consumer guides, et cetera. An amusing feature of the organisation's monthly magazine and website is the section "Hein?" wherein errors of translation into French, submitted by the public, are posted. While many of the examples are amusing, I found the one below rather particularly perplexing, so much so that I seriously doubt the origins of the item in question.

Here is the LINK:
https://www.protegez-vous.ca/chronique-hein?page=8

UPDATE: After several attempts, I was able to shrink and attach the image below. Although it is distressingly common to encounter translation errors in labelling, packaging et cetera, I have serious doubts that a company located in the U.S.A. would, even erroneously, describe their political entity as "The People's Republic", hence my suspicion that the item was produced off-shore.
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
Last edited by Speakeasy on Sun Jun 18, 2017 8:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.
2 x

mcthulhu
Orange Belt
Posts: 228
Joined: Sun Feb 26, 2017 4:01 pm
Languages: English (native); strong reading skills - Russian, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian, Bulgarian, Slovene, Farsi; fair reading skills - Polish, Czech, Dutch, Esperanto, Portuguese; beginner/rusty - Swedish, Norwegian, Danish
x 590

Re: Lost in Translation: Protégez-vous

Postby mcthulhu » Sun Jun 18, 2017 7:28 pm

You might have been auto-correcting the French translation. The photo seems to say "the People's Republic of the USA," which is pretty funny at least to me. Or was it the "fabrique en" instead of "fabriqué à" that caught your attention?

Thanks for the link. I wonder how many of these came from Google Translate. Machine translations can sometimes be surprising. Some of them seem unlikely to have come even from a human choosing translations at random from a dictionary.

Mike
0 x

User avatar
zenmonkey
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2528
Joined: Sun Jul 26, 2015 7:21 pm
Location: California, Germany and France
Languages: Spanish, English, French trilingual - German (B2/C1) on/off study: Persian, Hebrew, Tibetan, Setswana.
Some knowledge of Italian, Portuguese, Ladino, Yiddish ...
Want to tackle Tzotzil, Nahuatl
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=859
x 7030
Contact:

Re: Lost in Translation: Protégez-vous

Postby zenmonkey » Sun Jun 18, 2017 7:36 pm

Pretty much screams "made in Peoples Republic of Not USA".
1 x
I am a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar

Speakeasy
x 7658

Re: Lost in Translation: Protégez-vous

Postby Speakeasy » Sun Jun 18, 2017 9:04 pm

mcthulhu wrote: … Or was it the "fabrique en" instead of "fabriqué à" that caught your attention? … Machine translations can sometimes be surprising…
zenmonkey wrote:Pretty much screams "made in Peoples Republic of Not USA".
Merci pour vos commentaires!

In Québec, most articles produced in the U.S.A. are labelled with the simple "Fabriqué aux É.U." or "Produit aux É.U." What drew my attention to this particularly poor translation of "Made in USA" were (a) the perplexing indication "Republique populaire", and (b) the relatively rare use of "USA" in labelling, where "U.S.A." is both more correct and more common ... in the early 1960's a small Japanese manufacturing region was re-named "USA" in a deliberate attempt at misleading the American consumer into believing labels indicating "Made in USA" meant that the item had been produced in the United States of America, whereas the label (clearly, but misleadingly) indicated that it had been produced in Japan. The ruse was successful for many years. The region still exists; however, as far as I understand, goods produced for export indicate "Made in Japan."

In any event, I suspect that the article above (the pillow) was produced in the RPC and that the person responsible for the strange labelling was just another incompetent party hack who received his life-time position as a "translator" through patronage.

I have "updated" my original post so as to include an image of the label.
0 x

Cainntear
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3469
Joined: Thu Jul 30, 2015 11:04 am
Location: Scotland
Languages: English(N)
Advanced: French,Spanish, Scottish Gaelic
Intermediate: Italian, Catalan, Corsican
Basic: Welsh
Dabbling: Polish, Russian etc
x 8667
Contact:

Re: Lost in Translation: Protégez-vous

Postby Cainntear » Sun Jun 18, 2017 9:05 pm

There's another quite mundane explanation -- rather than hire a translator, they decided to just look at a label and replace the French for China with USA.
2 x

Speakeasy
x 7658

Re: Lost in Translation: Protégez-vous

Postby Speakeasy » Sun Jun 18, 2017 9:17 pm

Cainntear wrote: ... they decided to just look at a label and replace the French for China with USA.
Hmm, perhaps the labelling was actually a clever political statement. Oops, we're not allowed to go there!
0 x

User avatar
zenmonkey
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2528
Joined: Sun Jul 26, 2015 7:21 pm
Location: California, Germany and France
Languages: Spanish, English, French trilingual - German (B2/C1) on/off study: Persian, Hebrew, Tibetan, Setswana.
Some knowledge of Italian, Portuguese, Ladino, Yiddish ...
Want to tackle Tzotzil, Nahuatl
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=859
x 7030
Contact:

Re: Lost in Translation: Protégez-vous

Postby zenmonkey » Mon Jun 19, 2017 12:38 am

Cainntear wrote:There's another quite mundane explanation -- rather than hire a translator, they decided to just look at a label and replace the French for China with USA.


This was also my assumption.
0 x
I am a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar

rlnv
Orange Belt
Posts: 228
Joined: Mon Jul 20, 2015 3:07 pm
Languages: English
x 454

Re: Lost in Translation: Protégez-vous

Postby rlnv » Mon Jun 19, 2017 12:57 am

I'm fairly sure that label is a warning. ;)
0 x

vonPeterhof
Blue Belt
Posts: 879
Joined: Sat Aug 08, 2015 1:55 am
Languages: Russian (N), English (C2), Japanese (~C1), German (~B2), Kazakh (~B1), Norwegian (~A2)
Studying: Kazakh, Mandarin, Coptic
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1237
x 2833
Contact:

Re: Lost in Translation: Protégez-vous

Postby vonPeterhof » Mon Jun 19, 2017 5:17 am

Speakeasy wrote:in the early 1960's a small Japanese manufacturing region was re-named "USA" in a deliberate attempt at misleading the American consumer into believing labels indicating "Made in USA" meant that the item had been produced in the United States of America, whereas the label (clearly, but misleadingly) indicated that it had been produced in Japan. The ruse was successful for many years. The region still exists; however, as far as I understand, goods produced for export indicate "Made in Japan."

OT, but that's a myth. Even assuming that US customs would be willing to overlook such misleading labelling, the proper name Usa (宇佐) had existed since long before the war in the names of at least two villages (one of which later became the city of Usa), at least two rivers unrelated to those villages, as well as a surname.
0 x

User avatar
Ani
Brown Belt
Posts: 1433
Joined: Mon Mar 14, 2016 8:58 am
Location: Alaska
Languages: English (N), speaks French, Russian & Icelandic (beginner)
x 3840
Contact:

Re: Lost in Translation: Protégez-vous

Postby Ani » Mon Jun 19, 2017 5:00 pm

Oh I assumed they just meant to write California ;-p

Some of those others were so funny. Thanks for pointing me I that direction. I laughed way too hard :)
0 x
But there's no sense crying over every mistake. You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.


Return to “General Language Discussion”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Google [Bot], tastyonions and 2 guests